The great old days when you could find a host with good price, check what hosting parameters they give and be safe are over. Today millions of site owners use advanced Internet marketing tools, solutions and scripts to make their online business really successful. And these IM tools demand from the hosting to fit their requirements. Usually the requirements aren't something beyond impossible.

But it turns out that many hosting companies - even big hosting brands - have some tiny pitfalls that can ruin the success of your online business.

List of Typical Pitfalls (usually hidden by hosting companies).

So, before you made a final decision to pay for the hosting package, make sure that they have answered your questions about:

(a) Crons or Cron Jobs

Many modern scripts are activated by cron jobs. These cron jobs are like a heart for Internet marketing scripts. When crons are activated, the script gets activated as well and executes necessary tasks (e.g. checks your backlinks or add news content that you have in a publishing pipeline, etc.) Without crons you will need to activate scripts manually and this is a pain in 21st century when robots must do most of the routine jobs.

Funny, but there are hosting companies that don't allow cron jobs. Now that you know what crons are doing - can you say that these hosting companies are ready to work in the new millennium?

(b) mySQL Databases

mySQL Databases store different types of information - your base of users and how to manage the sending of emails, or your content, or all your products that you are selling. It was really surprising to see that some hosts are not allowing mySQL databases or limit their number. And if you have 3 different scripts that need different mySQL databases on one site? Say bye-bye to scripts? No, better say bye-bye to this hosting.

(c) Limits on Sending Emails

Many hosts limit your possibility to send emails. They explain that they are fighting with spam and need to put limits. But if you have a decent base of 500 - 700 subscribers on your site, you will be surprised to find out that hosting is cutting down the broadcast on 300 messages, and the rest of your clients or subscribers don't get your messages.

Some companies put even a smaller limit on broadcasting the emails. If you plan to grow your business and be able to send messages to your base, make sure that your hosting company promises in written form that will not cut your broadcast down.

(d) Included Programs Not Installed

This is a rare trick, but it's used by one of big hosting brands. When you read their hosting parameters you see that they have different kinds of programs and scripts on their account (statistics checking, crons, mySQL databases, etc.).

On the salespage this host is saying to have everything included to the hosting account. But they don't say you will need to install all that scripts yourself! Great!!

(e) Blocking for Frequent Connections from one IP

This is another good example of brainless fight against spam. Some hosts will block the ISP IP is there are many connections from it. There have been cases when people who had to add content (descriptions of items in the Internet shop) several times a day where blocked and could not access the site. And when the host was squeezed to answer, the hosting support admitted they have a feature that blocks the IP from where these connections go.

It means your content writer or designer can get blocked, your affiliates who check the stats too often can get blocked, different pinging services (many blogs use them) can get blocked. It's a shame when some hosts instead of fighting spam, fight against site owners.

(f) Limit on CHMODs/Permissions

All pages on your site are files. And these files have specific permissions. Modern tools need permissions that allow re-writing the files, and some hosts don't allow it. Imagine you have a big article directory with 100 articles inside, and you need to change the place of AdSense block on all these pages. With a professional article directory script you just change one template, and the script itself re-creates all pages of article directory with the changes that you've done in the template - simple and fast solution.

But script needs permissions that allow re-writing on all files/pages of this directory, without these permissions script can't do this job automatically. So, the hosts who limit the permissions are suggesting you to do changes on all 100 article pages manually!! Good luck on doing that routine job.

Surely, hosts explain it with security reasons. But the script is ON the hosting account. So, if hosts are great at security, no one will get inside the host. And if someone intrudes inside, permissions will not save you.

(g) Quality of Support

Support is a big part of success or failure of your hosting. If you get quick answers from support team before you made a purchase - it can be a trick.

Most of the hosts have different support teams. One of the teams has the task to squeeze the client for a purchase and usually this team is super fast on answering your questions and giving big promises on the quality of their service. But after you make the payment and get some technical problem, don't be surprised to see that tech support can be a lot longer in answering your support tickets (and by far longer in solving them).

The best way is to test this hosting. If you plan to transfer many sites on the new hosting, test this new hosting for several weeks on one site. Check how fast they are on answering your support tickets and how professional the support is. It is not rare that even with big hosting brands only 2-3 guys on the support are qualified, the rest are just 'youngsters' who know some basics and always try to push the problem back on your shoulders.

SUMMARY.

Surely these are all pitfalls that hosting company may have, but if you ask these questions before the purchase - you will save your time, money and nerves. Don't be fooled by big brands, because even they can have black spots. And you deserve the best for the money that you pay.