iPad Winner – For Completing a Survey

The iPad Win

For those who can’t be bothered filling in or replying to online contests (I’m one as well), never pass up on the Lunarpages entries.

They’re one of the very few surveys that I’ll always gladly fill out, no matter how short or long, even if there is no contest involved.

I’ve loved their services since day one of my hosting, and all their staff have always been so helpful that I’m always encouraging everyone I meet to consider Lunarpages for hosting. I get very excited when I get a client for my SEO work and find out they’re hosted on LP.

Getting the phone call saying I had won the iPad really caught me by surprise, because I had never even given that part of filling the survey a single thought. A fantastic prize from my favorite Hosting Service – it felt like Xmas in April!

I’ve been personally using Lunarpages hosting services for almost 10 years, and have been exceptionally pleased with their service.

Bill Tarling

www.vancouverislandseo.com

TESTIMONIAL

Ten years ago, I spent many months heavily checking out hundreds of hosting services. It was easy enough to immediately eliminate the majority of the sites as poor candidates for my needs: it was amazing that almost every host claimed to be the best and most widely used service, but provided absolutely nothing to back up any claims.

Scams were abundant back then (and still are today, though most users are a little savvier now). Worse than the scams, however, were all the services charging absolutely ridiculous rates for hosting websites while offering less space than you could fit on an old 3 ½” floppy disk.

For those too young to remember what a floppy disk is, let’s just say you would probably need at least two of them just to hold one mp3 song.

It’s only common sense that any Hosting company with a poorly done website should be immediately dropped from consideration to weed out poor choices. Forget the hype or promises: if the Hosting Company is amateurish in their presentation online, they aren’t likely to be savvy in delivering the quality or support when you need it.

About 2 months of checking out hosts, I managed to narrow down the list to about 50 hosting services that might work well for my needs. Now, I’ve been working with computers since 1973, so at least I was fortunate enough to know enough to help eliminate a lot of fact from hype. In less than a week, my shortlist was quickly cut down by half.

Another week of researching the hosts went by, and I had my choices narrowed down to my top 10 potential choices.
Now it was time to really scrutinize and test each one…

PRICING

Unfortunately many people make their hosting choice strictly by picking whoever offers the cheapest price. We all want a good deal, but it’s also to remember old sayings such as “sometimes you get what you pay for”.

A low price was important to me, but not if it meant later finding out the hard way why a bargain isn’t always a bargain if it was just going to keep breaking down. Worse still were the ones that hid the real costs by giving you a really cheap starting package, only to up sell you all the features and functions you end up needing at a hefty surcharge or fee.

I looked at high priced hosting, as well as budget priced hosts – with extra caution and scrutiny to be placed on any company that seemed to offer way more features for so much less.

Lunarpages was one of the lowest priced packages, so I was cautious. While their offer looked great (almost too good), I honestly didn’t expect them to make the cut once I started checking them out deeper at the time.

WHAT WAS INCLUDED

This was a little trickier to analyze at first because every company had their own combination of packages. Some had a lot of storage, but monthly bandwidth limits would mean a lot higher surcharge if the site had a lot of traffic. Some sites had a fairly reasonable or even nice storage and bandwidth usage balance, but adding more features [such as databases, email address, and other critical expansions for site growth] would pile up on top of the monthly bill.

Here again, I was leery at first because Lunarpages seemed not only to offer the most generous site capacity, they claimed to include so many features that everyone else was charging for. This sent up some red flags. I didn’t cross LP off my list, but I was sure there was “a catch” – there’s almost always a catch if you look hard enough – so while LP had my interest, I was ready to delve through every nook and cranny to prove it was too good to be true.

Lunarpages had made it to my narrowed down list of top 8 choices, but I expected them to fail almost immediately once I started putting the hosts through the next steps.

HYPE, PROMISES, & SERVICE

Almost every site at the time was hyping and claiming 99.9% uptime guarantees (including the sites that were illuminated very early on when I started – especially since more than a couple were hit or miss whether their site was still online each time I tried later on).

While that seemed to be the biggest selling point each host made [the near 100% up time], in real life it’s not likely to happen. There will always be minor glitches (and they’re not always the host or server’s fault), so everybody making the same claim was of little value – especially since there really wasn’t any way to check how true it was.

So let’s start by checking things we can all spot right away…

What would happen if your site did suddenly go down?

The first thing I wanted to know was how I could reach a web host by phone. Yes it’s true that I might use a live chat desk, ticket request, forum post, or regular email to contact a company, but I at least want to know that I can also phone them directly to get immediate help.

Most companies had toll free numbers to reach them, but I’m located in Canada so not all U.S. toll free numbers can be reached from here – I wanted their direct local phone number in case of urgency. I even called each host to make sure I could reach them: one host in my shortlist had online communication only (no phone number), so I marked them off from consideration.

Next I checked other ways to contact the companies if needed: as above, via email, tickets, or whatever. The more options and alternate methods of communication available the better. I also didn’t want to rely on just email because that would be useless if my site and email were both down, plus some hosts take forever if they respond at all.

Note: I checked by emailing each host. Lunarpages, as well as a couple of others were reasonably fast to reply. Two other hosts still hadn’t contacted me back over the next week (even after sending a 2
info request), so I erased them from my shortlist.

I was down to my top 5 candidates for hosting: now was the time to pull out the tricky guns so see how well they could deliver the goods…

FORUMS: The Best Behind-The-Scenes Spy

I really appreciate sites which also try to provide helpful and useful information for their customers (rather than just being a sales pitch strictly about them. Articles, How To’s, FAQ sections, links and resources – it all scores brownie points in my books.

But – the best (and sneakiest) way to find out how a company “really” handles business is when they also have a forum board. Not all sites or companies need one, but for a hosting service it can really show a lot of insight into their service. As a matter of fact, this was one of the deciding factors which won me over to choose LP as my host.

I spent the next [final] four weeks just monitoring each host’s forum. Yes total time selecting the right host might seem like overkill to most users, but I didn’t want to make a choice and then find myself having to look around all over from the start because they couldn’t meet my needs. You can learn a lot about a company by how they manage (and maintain) their forum by lurking.

Now, a few of the hosting companies had reasonably organized forum sections (a plus), but I’ll admit Lunarpages really caught my attention with theirs. It not only had the usual pre-sale postings areas and customer feedback; it also had an abundance of website related information. There were programming sections (all beautifully categorized whether it was for graphics info, computer languages, site management, etc) which ranged for users with no computer knowledge, to heavy tech detailed posts for geeks.

While that really caught my attention, it wasn’t what I was lurking to see. I wanted to see how responses were for the pre sales questions, and even more importantly, the responses for negative feedback or complaints. That’s where you can quickly find out whether to trust the host or not!

First stop was the customers feedback section (not the testimonials in the site, but rather the ones in the forum since these are more likely to be unsolicited and selectively picked). On many of the hosting sites, there was almost entirely praise with nothing negative really being mentioned. However, if you keep checking every hour or two, after a few days you’ll start picking up a few negative posts.

The reason I say keep checking throughout the day is because it’s actually a fairly fast way to find out why there’s rarely negative feedback: if you look again in a couple of hours, or even just the next day, it’s often very hard to find that bad review or complaint you had just read. For some reason the posts just seem to magically vanish. It’s almost as though an admin had rushed through and hit delete before others could read it.

Another host’s forum took a slightly different approach – when they had a post even remotely negative, they openly blasted the ‘incompetent user’ and stated they would just delete their account since they weren’t grateful. Then, within a few days, the account (and the posting) was deleted.

Here’s where I was shocked (and extremely pleased) with Lunarpages, their staff, and how they handled any negative posts. They always remained extremely polite, friendly, and apologetic for any difficulties the user expressed. They offered suggestions where possible, and even if the user stated they were leaving LP always remained professional and supportive of the user’s decision. And imagine this – LP didn’t delete the negative feedback.

Now that’s a sign that a company not only believes in operating ethically, they also value negative responses as a good way to see where and how they can improve on servicing their users.

More insightful still was who from the LP staff was responding to posts (whether questions, positive/negative feedback, tech info, etc.) It was just one or two staff members whose job was to monitor the boards as customer services reps, but rather staff members from all the departments. I was amazed at how active everybody in the company seemed to participate. Not only that, the posts and answers were so swift (often within less than 15 or 20 minutes). These guys were really on the ball.

The biggest surprise of all (something you don’t often see on a web host forum) was how helpful and plentiful postings were from LP’s clients – not just the staff themselves. That speaks volumes because I couldn’t believe how many customers were spending so much time offering help. On most hosting forums, people just drop in occasionally if they need something because they’re busy with their own site or interests. Instead, the LP customers actually acted as a family or community and really helped each other. Everyone seemed to burst with pride at being part of this Lunarpages community (and that enthusiasm was contagious).

NOTE: The forum content areas were so well organized and maintained, that I often came back whenever I needed some tech advice. It was so helpful; I knew I had found an absolutely valuable resource even if I didn’t decide to go with LP as my host choice.

Well, the atmosphere at Lunarpages (and with their customers) did win me over. While it seemed like everything LP was offering still seemed just a bit too good to not have strings attached; there were so many positive signs that I decided to risk it and signed up. I still feel (10 years later) that it was the best online choice I’ve made – but at the time I didn’t realize how smarter that choice was about to be proved.

AFTER SIGNING UP WITH LUNARPAGES FOR HOSTING

For better or worse, I had spent quite a while before deciding, and Lunarpages had won me over. Now I would soon find out if my choice was the right one or not.

Obviously I was happy with my selection (since I’ve been using LP’s hosting for ten years now), but it was all the little things which kept getting more and more excited. I had been expecting the worst [i.e. finally finding out what “the catch” was to their enticing offer], but instead found the exact opposite.

A few months after signing up, I got an email from Lunarpages – from the initial few lines, they started talking about upgrading their equipment and software, and even more storage and bandwidth being offered. Immediately, the first thought that ran through my head: “I knew it! Here comes the up-sell…”

Well, there was no up-sell. As a matter of fact, rather than having an upgrade option for a “low low price” – all the increased services and package features were included free for all their users. Huh? That didn’t make sense… online companies just didn’t give away perks, they would nickel and dime to get more money.

Not Lunarpages – it was all included – no charge.

I was still skeptical though, and figured I would just be nailed when it came time to renew with the standard “now that you’ve tried it, you can keep the premiums for just X dollars a month”. I waited a year, cringing at the renewal notice to find out how much my bill would go up.

I was shocked at renewal time. Not only hadn’t my bill gone up, my rates had actually gone down! On top of that, Lunarpages kept upgrading more and more, adding in new features, and providing more services the whole time. It was amazing!

TECH SUPPORT

Now it hasn’t been completely problem free, because I do find my site(s) sometimes go down about once or twice a year. That’s something that would normally have me jumping ship ASAP, but the tech support was incredible. Most of the time the sites were down only for 15 to 20 minutes (it’s reached the point that I don’t even bother calling anymore because I just take a quick break to grab a fresh coffee, and all is working again).

Throughout the years though (for my sites, and for all my clients sites that I’ve had subscribe to LP hosting), the tech responses couldn’t have been better. Forum posts – answers within minutes. Submitting a “Ticket” – responses usually within 15 minutes. Likewise with any direct email inquiries: very fast replies. The most pleasing part was that the Lunarpages staff also followed up afterward to make sure everything was taken care of, even after having helped solve what I needed. Fantastic staff to deal with.

Since I’ve been working with computers so long, I was especially impressed with the tech service by phone. I hate companies that can only baby-step their customers because they need to read the instructions line by line in their help manual.

Instead, the tech department could speed up the process (or even lower it a little) in full geek speak whenever I needed it. These guys weren’t reading from a ‘book of solutions’, they actually knew what they were doing. Their skills and troubleshooting were amazing (and I even learned a lot of tricks I hadn’t even thought of).
Now Geek Speak is great for me, but a lot of my clients aren’t really computer literate. A few are still just trying to get the hang of emails and web browsers. That’s where the tech support proved itself really impressive – the techs could immediately switch their explanations to the easiest to follow layman step-by-step
assistance. They’ve been able to help every one of my clients, regardless of computer or technical background.

The most unusual bonus is rather than feeling the usual dread or fury at having to call a support line, I actually enjoy the rare times I need to phone for their help. They’re always so cheerful, go way beyond expectations when helping, and are actually fun to talk to. They’re never condescending, and always seem so glad to have helped out.
The staff is so pleasant that there are times when I wish things would go wrong more often just so I could say hello. Lunarpages support people have always left me in a great mood afterward.

My Biggest Complaint About Lunarpages

Strange as it may sound, my biggest complaint is that the Lunarpages Hosting has completely spoiled me…

I do SEO for a lot of companies and websites, which means I’ve ended up having to work with a lot of other hosting services. LP has “spoiled me” because for my own hosting I’m just so used to having so
many features, tools, access and control over my sites. It’s been so fast and easy to make whatever changes I’ve needed that I’ve taken all the resources and services for granted… and then I have to deal with site storage and hosting with “the other guys” *groan*

After having worked on a couple of hundred sites hosted across about 50 or so other hosting services, I quickly learned how flexible and extensive LP’s system has been. It’s been a huge eye opener dealing with other hosts because I’m constantly amazed at how little so many are providing to their customers.

Whether it’s access to 301 redirects, adding in more email addresses or databases, or even managing FTP access – about every 4 out of 5 sites hosted elsewhere that I work on leaves me mumbling “but I can do all that on Lunarpages, why won’t [other host] let their customers have the same options and access”.

Most of my clients are kind of stuck with their current hosts, but whenever one is looking to move elsewhere I immediately point them to Lunarpages. It’s not just because I like the LP services, but rather than it makes my life so much easier and faster: I then have the chance to get my client’s site done right instead of having to band-aid or work around another host’s shortcomings.

BIO

Bill Tarling has over 38 years of computer experience (long before the first home computer was ever released), and specializes in organic SEO for websites. Google, Yahoo! And Bing are his favorite toys.

Bill also has over 21 years as a professional actor in the film industry, and is a published author. He has happily been using Lunarpages hosting for the past 10 years.