Do me a favor. Visit the following URL and tell me what you see?
http://www.phinheaven.com
Those who have had this happen will immediately know what's going on there and will emphatically agree with the following statement:
Having your third-party hosting provider drop the ball can be the worst thing that ever happens to your business.
Now I'm not just talking about downtime, like what occurred to thousands of RackSpace customers a few weeks back, when a truck hit a transformer feeding power to its Dallas data center. I'm referring to the utter collapse of a website due to gross negligence on the part of its third-party hosting provider.
As many of us know from experience, sites are often the target of all sorts of malicious server attacks. Reliable hosting companies, like RackSpace, are not immune to this type of attack but are typically well-prepared to handle such emergency and quickly restore data and functionality to the stricken site.
I know this because I've worked with companies that employ RackSpace's services and have quickly gotten back to normal after suffering through some sort of internet malady. I've also worked with companies that chose to go with less reliable hosting providers only to find out after the fact, that their server was not properly backed up or otherwise protected.
The result is lots of lost data, suffering search engine rankings, and in some cases, the utter collapse of what was once a great online portal.
For the record, yes I'm a fan of the Miami Dolphins (insert tasteless jokes here). The site I've referenced was considered to be, by far, the largest online fan forum for that team.
Sadly, their decision to go with a lackluster hosting provider has rendered them null and void for over a month, and has likely resulted in hundreds if not thousands of defections to competing fan sites and an overall drop in SEO presence.
Hosting is not a facet that lends itself to penny pinching. Make sure that your provider is up to the challenge of handling potentially disastrous situations. If it's not, spend the extra money to make sure that you're covered.
Otherwise, your site might be the next to find itself in the hosting provider crypt.
