Here’s a story about a new T324 client, who we will call Really Nice Tiny NonProfit Company.
We received an emergency call from RNTNPC, whose website had gone completely down.
They had absolutely no way to access it, as the low-cost web designer they used had vanished.
Their low-cost hosting company had the designer's contact info, so they were not notified when the host decided they were overusing resources and took their site down.
This is not uncommon, unfortunately. Freelance web designers can disappear as if they never existed, and do so surprisingly often.
There’s no registry, union, or guild for web designers, so if the only contact your hosting company has is your designer, you could be in for some trouble. Low-cost hosting can mean limited server resources- how many shared web hosting accounts does a hosting company have on one server?
If a company is charging just a few dollars a month for hosting, will they be putting your account on the same server as thousands of others?
If they do, you risk website loading slowdowns and other issues, such as the company deciding your account is eating up too much bandwidth and summarily pulling you down. Or maybe your page will come up with “This user has exceeded their bandwidth for the month. Please try again next month”.
Prepare for emergencies by making sure you get copies of all your site files from your designer when your site is done, and making sure you're familiar with the usage policies of your host.
Make sure you've chosen one that's a good fit for your anticipated needs, and that they know how to reach you. But if it's too late for that, give us a call- we were able to get RNTNPC back up right away!
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