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Can you recommend an alternative web host?
Question
My current hosting is too slow, or is unreliable or doesn't provide a particular service or feature that I need to get the most out of CactuShop. I've looked at your hosting but it's more expensive than cheap deals I can get from a hosting bucket shop.
Please recommend a host that provides fast, reliable hosting with all the bells and whistles I need to get the best from CactuShop but for half the price so I don't need to buy your service.
Answer
Our reluctance to name specific hosts is not deliberately evasive. It's just that there are a number of problems with us recommending alternatives.
The first is that in the past when we did occasionally suggest another host and it doesn't work out, the customer invariably blames us "you recommended XYZ host but they tell me they cannot do ABC to my site, so it's your fault, I wouldn't have used them if you hadn't advised me to, please sort it out" etc. There is little to gain for us in recommending other hosts and we only stand to take the blame if the customer is not satisfied.
In practice though we don't have extensive knowledge of the merits of other hosts.
Through our support role we do encounter many sites hosted elsewhere. However, the nature of support means it is unusual for us to look into which host a particular site is using unless there are problems that seem to be related to the hosting. So a few hosts tend to hit the radar if we've encountered particular issues with them several times, but would tend to fly under it if their services run CactuShop well and the customers are happy with them. In this case, we simply would not normally be informed.
We would not say there were not cheaper alternatives around than our hosting, though it's unlikely anything significantly cheaper will provide the level of performance and reliability that we think appropriate for a business web site. Customers who have worked their way through multiple hosts searching for the 'Holy Grail' of bulletproof performance for a rock-bottom price can probably attest to this.
If you really do want to host elsewhere, we would encourage you to check out smaller hosts that run Windows servers. In our experience smaller hosts are more flexible and the support staff you deal with tend to be admins with direct access to the servers, whereas the bigger 'bucket shop' hosts tend to have unqualified call centre staff instead.
Ultimately you get what you pay for and it is unrealistic to expect that there are alternatives that provide exactly the level of service as a premium product for half the price. Our hosting works out at a little over $1 (50p) per day. Any business compromising on a vital service to save a few pennies each day and then experiencing loss of business due to slowness and downtime probably needs to review its priorities and determine whether the savings outweigh the losses that result.