It's astonishing how often people researching a shared hosting service do so without due diligence.
Shared hosting by its nature is similar to condominium living (might be better described as tenement buildings). You have your space to use as you like within the boundaries of the TOS. But you also have the common areas, used and shared by all the other residents of your complex.
Many people choose their shared hosting service based on price, services, uptime, and the reviews written on Hostjury by clients of various hosts. Many people overlook, or do not consider that their IP address may also be considered a common area. Until they are submitting a ticket for email errors and find out their IP has been blacklisted.
Before you sign up for a shared hosing account, find out how often the company was blacklisted in the last year. Discover if they're known to route hijacked network space, or if they have a history of spam/abuse support. If one of your 'neighbors' spams, you can end up listed. It stinks, but if you share the same IP with a spammer... you're banned also.
To determine a host's past record can be found using a handy tool like SenderScore. By entering the host's domain you can find:
MX record
SPF or Sender ID, is an email authentication protocol designed to verify that each email originates from the Internet domain from which it claims to come based on the sender's IP address
Related Sending Domains, are other domains ending in your-new-host dot whatever that are sending email.
SSL Certificate: owner, issuer, and expiration date
The Whois records.
I did a random search of a few hosts listed on Hostjury. I was surprised to find some with expired SSL certificates, and others with no SPF in place. Issues such as these are much better discovered prior to finalizing the short list. Clients uncovering this information after the fact always have a recourse...
Fri, 17 September 2010, 01:38
Yeah, it's tough. . .my clients who are hosting with shared hosting companies are often oblivious to these kinds of things, but then can you blame them?? Is the average person going to think about whether or not their shared hosting company is blacklisted by major ISP's?? Probably not -- they're simply concerned about cost and uptime. Nonetheless, I used to resell shared hosting back in 2005 for iPowerWeb, and now that I can offer my clients hosting directly, or their own VPS's and dedicated servers, I would NEVER go back to suggesting they sign up with a shared hosting provider. Your website's reputation begins by WHERE you host your website, and you want a clean IP address from the beginning. It's already tough to market your website on the internet, you don't need to fight your way through blacklists too! =0)
Mon, 19 October 2009, 23:22
I tried out the SenderScore website. The problem is that you need the IP to check if your host is blacklisted but with most shared hosts you won't get the IP address until you buy an account.
Mon, 14 September 2009, 22:42
One.com should be considered negligent soley on the basis that they provide such rubbish service - and they don't provide adequate information regarding the little service they do provide.