How Does Your Hosting Provider Measure Up?

Choosing the right web hosting service can make or break your business. After all, if the service is down and the support is subpar, you have the potential to lose thousands of viewers. These viewers aren't sympathetic. They simply move on to your competitors. It aways pays to ask yourself, how does your hosting provider measure up?

I have been working with web servers since as far back when the internet first became popular. As a project lead for a software consulting firm, we were tasked to create a web server because back then, nothing like that existed.

About a year later, web servers started to emerge onto the scene and people could subscribe on a monthly basis to upload HTML files and other assets, like images, and even videos back then.

Everything was crude in the early days and creating a web site took a lot of work. It was all brute force HTML. Most people weren't designers which forced anyone who wanted a website to find web designers, who were quite expensive then.

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WordPress Changed the Landscape

WordPress started in 2003 but didn't become popular until the later half of the decade. Once it did, though, it turned web designing on its side. Suddenly, anyone who could install the free WordPress software on their webservers and follow relatively simple instructions on how to set up a database (required for WordPress), had a platform to create content without worrying any about how to design web pages.

If the idea of fiddling with databases scared people, that soon went away when hosting companies started offering pushbutton installations of WordPress. Webmasters entered in a few parameters in a wizard, and when the installation had all the information needed, a new website was born.

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Enter the Hackers

Why am I going on and on about the early days of the web, hosting, and WordPress? I am giving some background information about why I made the choice that I made for my hosting and just how happy I have been ever since I made the switch.

Since I had no control over the support, I was at the mercy of the hosting companies.

Several of my clients dropped my services (which I really couldn't blame them) and I stopped offering hosting on my accounts. It wasn't worth the hassle.

A Hosting Solution that Has Never Been Hacked

I was frustrated by the lack of choices for hosting. I tried several different ones and each of them got hacked at some point. Whenever I asked the support team about it, they simply answered it's just the way it is. Also, it took them at least 24 hours (often more) to restore my websites. My sites were down during that entire time. Talk about stressful situations!

Around 2009, during the biggest mortgage and banking crisis, I worked for a bank as a technology person. It was scary as none of us knew whether we would have a job from day-to-day. We were in a holding pattern of sorts. Finding a new job wasn't easy, back then, either.

What Makes Wealthy Affiliate Hosting so Special?

The truth is, there is nothing magical about the hosting I have at Wealthy Affiliate. They use Amazon Web Services (AWS) for their hosting, which by extension is what I get.

But the critical aspect is that they provide everything needed for me to host my websites without having to worry about support. They handle the critical updates to the servers, although they do this through their subscription with Amazon, which is fine by me.

On the rare occasions that one of my websites went down, their support team would have it back in about ten minutes (usually less).

Why Not Host Your Own Site on AWS?

You can sign up for AWS and create your own hosting access. I thought about this option, too, and did the research on it. What I found is that I would have to get "back into the hosting business" myself, which I little desire to do. Amazon has support tiers, but the tier that is worth anything costs about $15,000 per month.

I don't know this for certain, but my guess is wealthy affiliate pays for the top-tier support. I can't imagine them being able to provide the stealth support they provide (Wealthy Affiliate) without that top-tier. They have the financial resources to do so. I don't. I'm guessing most of my readers don't either.

Amazon's pricing structure is confusing, too. It almost seems as you cannot know how much you'll pay until you actually start using the service. They have different pricing plans (all of them confusing, IMHO). And the worthwhile support tier is not included, i.e., the one that costs $15,000 per month.

What Are the Downsides to Wealthy Affiliate Hosting?

No service is perfect. There are some drawbacks of using Wealthy Affiliate for your hosting. The first is you don't get as much control over your hosting as you would with other providers.

Second, the service teaches about making money using WordPress websites. While WordPress is one of the most popular platforms for website owners, some people may wish to have other options. At the time of this writing, that was the only option available. It is possible to reach out to support to get other options installed, but there is no guarantee your request will be granted.

If you are a geeky tech person like me, you probably won't be happy with hosting at Wealthy Affiliate. Then again, when I had all those bells and whistles available on my other hosting accounts, I can count the number of times on my hand that I used them. That's one hand.

What About Wealthy Affiliate Training

Wealthy Affiliate started as a training platform. When I started there, it was a simple forum website.  The service did not include too many features. There was no hosting.

Now it's a full-scale social-media-like platform with a newsfeed, blog, and other tools, like keyword tools. You can create blog posts for other members and read what others have written. You can create training modules that others can benefit from, and if it becomes popular enough, you can even get paid for that training.

My reasons for signing up when I first started was to learn about the affiliate business and I have learned a lot. But the truth is, the direction the company has taken recently is not where I want to be. I am not criticizing them. But my main purpose with staying with Wealthy Affiliate right now for the hosting and support.

If you aren't familiar with the affiliate business model, the training that you'll receive is not bad. You will learn what you need to know to implement properly an affiliate business complete with a working website. Since this training is included as part of the package, you have nothing to lose by giving it a try.

But my motivation for this post is not to get you to sign up for the training itself. It is simply to express my satisfying experience I have had with the hosting.

How Much Does It Cost?

If you compare simply on the basis of price, you may find deals out in the cyberworld that will be lower than Wealthy Affiliate. If you pay per month, the cost of the service is $49 at the time of this writing.

NOTE: the prices of services online are always subject to change for any service, so you should confirm the prices before signing up. This article should not be misconstrued as a final offer. The only prices that you should consider valid are the ones offered on the Wealthy Affiliate Signup page.

For the premium service, you get 10 domains that you can host on the Wealthy Affiliate platform. For the premium plus service, you are allowed to host 50 websites.

You'll find plenty of service providers that offer unlimited hosting with unlimited bandwidth. You may be tempted by this offers, but don't be fooled. If you check the fine print, you'll see that you don't have unlimited bandwidth or even unlimited space.

You can certainly house as many domains as you like, but if they reach the limits set by each of these providers, you will be restricted and perhaps your service may even be cancelled. It's a deceptive practice, in my opinion. I am quite surprised the FTC has not gone after these companies. But it pays to know about these restrictions. 

If you think I am simply blowing smoke, do a search on the term "fair use" and hosting. You'll see that there are indeed restrictions.

The biggest takeaway here is to make sure your comparisons of different hosting providers are not based only on the price alone. Uptime is huge, and you'll need to take that into consideration. Service is huge, too.

Have I Checked Other Hosting Services?

Getting your sites hacked frequently causes you to search often for new providers. Each new provider you hope will have solved what the previous didn't, i.e., reducing the occurance of hacking.

The truth is I don't need to search any more. I have found the hosting Nirvana in my opinion. A 4-year track record is pretty darn good, wouldn't you say? 

Having said this, could there be a better service out there that is cheaper than the hosting provided by Wealthy Affiliate? Maybe. But why would I even go down that rabbit hole? Remember the old adage, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

I am not in the hosting review business. Quite frankly, I don't have time to worry about other hosting providers. Even if I did find another provider that offered its services at a lower price, are they hacker-free, or at least hacker-reduced?

One factor to keep in mind when comparing hosting services is that the reviewers are often getting an affiliate commission. The same is true with me for Wealthy Affiliate. If you decide to subscribe and pay via the links on this page, I will receive a commission.

Here is an important point  concerning that fact - I am a subscriber, too! I am not just recommending them to get a commission. I am recommending them mainly because they have been a wickedly dependable and reliable service. 

Is There a Guarantee That Wealthy Affiliate Hosting Will Always be Reliable?

Wealthy Affiliate controls the relationship it has with Amazon. I have no control over that relationship. It's possible that Amazon's reliability could suffer in the future, although I deem that as rather unlikely. Still, anything is possible.

Therefore, there is no way that I can offer any guarantee about future reliability and service. It's not up to me. It's up to Wealthy Affiliate and Amazon. All that I can state is that I have had great success with their service for the last four plus years. 

Things change, though. In the early days of hosting, a few companies were thought to be the best. They went through ownership changes and the services suffered drastically.

The web hosting industry is highly competitive, meaning the margins are low. If a company does not produce results, it is likely to go out of business quickly.

Conversely, cloud providers are solid and it's barriers to entry are high. The big three providers, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, all have the infrastructure to compete in this environment. 

While this is a positive for dependability, it comes at the cost of less competition. This usually means higher prices. To me, this is what makes the hosting at Wealthy Affiliate so attractive. They shelter you somewhat from having to deal directly with Amazon.

Of course, if Amazon raises the prices on their service, Wealthy Affiliate will likely have to pass it onto us. Also, if Amazon's service suffers in the future (remember, things change), Wealthy Affiliate will be left having to find a new provider.

Negative Reviews of Wealthy Affiliate

You'll find plenty of bashing of Wealthy Affiliate online. And depending on your perspective, it may even be warranted. Mostly, the negativity addresses the training aspects of the service. One review suggests that the model websites that Wealthy Affiliate uses as part of their training, don't produce the results advertised. The reviewer attributes this to outdated training.

In 2017, Niche Marketing, Inc., was sued by a company called MOBE. Niche Marketing, Inc., lost the case at the time. The case was brought against Niche Marketing by MOBE for negative posts about MOBE by Niche Marketing. 

Several months later, the owners of MOBE were brought up on fraud charges, which essentially confirmed what Niche Marketing, Inc. hasd said about them all along.

The takeaway here is that while the owners of Niche Marketing, Inc., were exonerated, they still had to go through the legal process, which cost them money and lost time. Members of Wealthy Affiliate who follow this advice of bashing other companies, may be subjected to the same legal scenario. The difference is the owners of Niche Marketing, Inc., have the necessary financial resources to go up against these legal challenges.

The owners were even justified in bashing MOBE. However, that didn't stop the owners of MOBE from taking legal action. Never forget that if you decide to follow this site-bashing advice. 

While these negative reviews may get you to wonder why I continue with Wealthy Affiliate. As mentioned, I am no longer promoting Wealthy Affiliate as a way to make money. I am concentrating only on the hosting aspects. However, you may find a few past posts that still promote the training from me.

I am working on removing them, but it is never a good idea to simply delete all your posts. It's better make adjustments slowly and let these smaller changes work their way through the search engines. Otherwise, your rankings may take a hit.

Wealthy Affiliate training suggests finding websites that are out to deceive people. This is the justification for members following this advice. The MOBE example shows that there are fraudulent sites. So the thinking is why not highlight the fact to help protect people from getting scammed? 

This outlook does not make Wealthy Affiliate training a scam. There may be some ethical issues involved and bad karma associated with it, especially since what constitutes a scam could be seen as subjective. Everything looks like a nail when you only have a hammer to work with.

The training does state to never be dishonest with your reviews. Several members don't follow that advice, but that is hardly the fault of the Wealthy Affiliate training.

Of course, knowing all this information means you can choose not follow the advice. You could sign up for the hosting alone based on the strength of this feature of the Wealthy Affiliate service. If you are so inclined to try out the training, you are armed with the knowledge that you will be advised to find websites to bash. 

If you have a problem with their business practices and don't want to be associated with them whatsoever, that too, is within your right. You will need to find alternative hosting arrangements, though. The hosting comes as part of the package when signing up for the premium and premium plus training memberships.

Are There Any Free Options Available?

Wealthy Affiliate does offer a free tier for its service, called Starter. If all you want to do is learn a bit more about running an affiliate business, this is the tier I would encourage you to choose.

However, the only hosting that is available with this free tier is siterubix.com hosting. Although you can develop a full affiliate website using siterubix, most members don't consider this to be high-quality hosting. You only receive a subdomain off the siterubix.com domain. 

For instance, if you were starting a affilaite website for panda diets, you could try to register the following:

PandaDiets.siterubix.com

If that is available, you could grab it and build your website using it. There are significant restrictions with create a website this way, but it is possible.

You also don't own the siterubix website. You are essentially borrowing it. If you decided to move away from Wealthy Affiliate, you would not be able to transfer that domain. You would need to find a domain and hosting and then port all your work to this new domain and hosting. 

For your reference, all the tiers are available to choose when you sign up for the service.

You Can Promote the Wealthy Affiliate Hosting Service as I Have Done Here

Suppose you decide to use Wealthy Affiliate for your hosting. When you sign up as a premium or premium plus member, you are given the right to sell Wealthy Affiliate memberships, too. That means, you can write an article just like this one (make it your own, though. Don't Copy!) If you convince people to sign up through your affiliate link, you will get a commission.

But guess what? It's not just one commission. You will continue to receive a commission for that signup indefintely until that member cancels. Further, if a member does cancel and signs up again at a later date, you will resume your commissions for that member.