Transferring your files in the dead of night so your bum host can’t see you ? Lol … life’s too short to deal with that trash. REGISTER YOUR DOMAIN YOURSELF … with an icann accredited domain registrar and you’re good to go. Your name is on and a crappy hosting company has zero to say about it.

-> buy an extra domain ( which you don’t care if you lose it), make the new domain your primary domain by requesting the host provider to do so, and then “while developing the new website”, move your old domain to other registrant like GoDaddy..And then slowly you move your website files. Leave the new domain there. And after all the moving, only cancel the hosting. With that it doesn’t matter if the host doesn’t return the “new domain” to you.

But usually host provider will just let you go without holding up your domain, well, may be I haven’t come across yet.

Finding decent web hosting really has become more complicated than it should be. These are just a few of the pitfalls and tricks hosts are using to snag people. Because I strongly dislike sleazy business practices Im going to add a couple more ( hope it’s ok.)

1. Watch out for those BS “top 10 best hosts” … “best web hosts 2011″ and the high ranked web hosts on review sites when you google for “hosting reviews” etc.

Most of those are nothing but paid to rank high on the list scams. Or those hosts pay some big money to advertise on the websites. So needless to say they get a good ranking.

Many of those sites are “partners” … aka: affiliates for the hosts they are recommending. Same thing goes for a lot of “reviews” and recommendations you come across for hosts. Be on the look out for affiliates. They don’t care whether you get good web hosting … as long as they get a juicy finders fee for spamming up the internet with bogus reviews.

2. Beware those “free domains” … esp “free domains for life”. What that really means is free domains as long as you stick with us. If you want to go elsewhere. They’ll refuse to give you your domain or give you serious problems getting it away from them.

Misc tip. Registering a domain name is not that costly. Better to do it yourself. So that there’s no confusion as to who owns it. If you’ve invested a lot of time and $ in a domain. Find out your web hosting is bad and try to go elsewhere. You DO NOT … want them keeping your domain or to have to start from scratch.

Good luck people.

When I tried to contact one provider, all I could find for contact was online chat. I am almost certain the chat was automated. I kept asking for a contact phone number and they couldn’t/wouldn’t tell me that (apparently) there isn’t one.

It was creepy.