“Best Hosting”… There are over 165,000 Google searches per month for the search term “Best Hosting”. Web Hosting services are easy enough to find, but with so many providers to choose from and nearly 7,000,000 searches per month for “Web Hosting” it’s obvious that there’s a lot of churn in the industry. People are often dissatisfied with their current provider and are looking for something better.

So, what separates “Best Hosting” apart from the industry standard… a standard that seems to be set a bit too low for millions of hosting customers?

The answer is obviously in service levels, plain and simple… expectations are not being met. There seems to be an appalling lack of service, not only in the hosting industry but across all industries. People just don’t seem to go the extra mile anymore whether it’s a web host not answering a support question in a timely manner because they’ve already got your money… or it’s the local fast food joint tossing cold fries into the bag at the drive through window because they know you won’t bother to drive all the way back… service has declined across the board.

If you want to find the “Best Host”, forget about asking about things like up-time, server specs, network speed, and so on. These are all very important factors in providing a good service but it’s pretty standard for any web host to have good equipment (and keep it turned on), a fast network, etc. because it’s become so inexpensive.

Top of the line equipment and infrastructure don’t mean a thing because everyone’s got it. What matters is the people who are running things. If you want to find the “Best Host”, then seek out the people who have the “Best Attitude” towards customers.

As a customer, I always have the attitude that I’ve worked hard for my money, and if this restaurant and that store want my money then they should work hard for it too. As a service provider, I hold myself to that standard. Yes, we have fast computers, and a fast network… so does everyone else. We feel we’re the “Best Host” because we care about our customers and doing right by them.

The next time you contemplate doing business with anyone, forget about features and benefits, forget about price. You need to ask probing questions that will reveal either a contempt or an appreciation of customers, and then look at their actions to see if what they say and what they do match up. Ask the next web host you’re thinking about signing up with to tell you about a situation where they’ve gone out of their way for a customer… that’s how to find the “Best Host”.