Boy, I can hear you guys now, “Oh, great! Now I have to worry about the web host taking my money!” Well, I hate to rain on your parade, but it’s a fact, scam hosts are out there waiting for you to make their day! The question is: Are you going to let them?

And if you’re a worrier take this to heart: The only real antidote for worry is positive action. So stop worrying and take action. Here’s 9 ways to tell if the web host you’re considering is legitimate!

1. Physical Address. This is most important of all! Does the web hosting company have a physical address you can see listed anywhere on their site? Can you verify it?

Ideally, you should be able to go there and pay them a visit at their office. I know this isn’t always practical if you live far away but it’s just the idea you could if you were in the area! By the way, a legitimate web host would welcome your visit.

When you’re doing business on the Internet it’s not always easy too tell just who the heck you’re dealing with. And if it wasn’t hard enough, the arrival of "reseller hosting" has made it possible for just about anybody to start up what seems like a legitimate web hosting business.

I mean even somebody who doesn’t know anything about hosting! Nada! Or doesn’t have any

equipment! Or an office, either! It’s ridiculous!

All someone has to do is sign up for a reseller plan and, PRESTO, they’re now a web host. This doesn’t mean their support’s going to be any good or they’ll pay their hosting bill.

The company could disappear suddenly with no warning possibly costing you a lot of money and your web site! So make absolutely sure the web host has a physical address you can verify.

2. Call support. Never, Never, Never, NEVER sign up until you’ve tested the web host’s support first! Are you LISTENING? Support is vital to your business success. Without it your operation will grind to a screeching halt! So what ever you do, don’t sign up until you’ve tested their support first.

And there’s no better way to do this than by picking up the telephone and calling. So what are you waiting for? Make the call!

You’ll be totally amazed at how many web site hosting companies with toll free numbers listed on their web site never answer their phones, or put you on hold and make you wait for what seems like an eternity. And this is if the phone number even WORKS!

They know most people won’t even bother to call the number. So they’ll just put one on their web site. But you’re not most people, RIGHT!

If you’re thinking about e-mailing a website hosting company, forget about it! E-mail just doesn’t cut it to test support! Why? Because they make their money by getting you to sign up for a hosting plan so their customer service response time will be extremely fast. You can count on it!

But only a few web hosting providers have good response time when somebody contacts their support by telephone. They don’t make their money by giving you good support. And after all, the unscrupulous operators are only in it for the money.

So make darn sure you call them up and test their support first before signing up!

3. Hosting plans. If a web host offers unlimited bandwidth or disk space take it with a grain of salt and DON’T SIGN UP. Remember the old adage: If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.

Just consider these facts! The average web site only uses about 50 megabytes of disk space and less then 1 gigabyte of bandwidth each month. And only one or two out of every 100 people who sign up actually use all the bandwidth.

So what do hosting companies do? Offer plans with an unbelievable amount of disk space and bandwidth for peanuts a month just to get people to sign up. They’re after numbers or warm bodies!

And once they’ve got you on board, then they’ll pull the plug on the sites using all the bandwidth offered. Claiming the sites are using too much of the system’s resources. What hogwash!

Every host is limited by how much RAM (random access memory) and CPU (central processing unit) their servers have. There’re no exceptions. RAM is the primary working memory of a computer. CPU is the main part of computer or the brains of the machine.

What most people don’t know is the phrase, “server resources being used,” refers to the amount of CPU and RAM a site uses. In other words, how much memory it uses. Memory is the storage capacity of a computer.

So if a site is terminated it’s because they are using too much memory and not disk space and bandwidth.

And remember this, the lower the price is and the more disk space and bandwidth you get with the plan, the more web sites the host will have to pack like sardines in each server to make their money back. This can lead to some SERIOUS uptime issues!

So what’s the lesson to be learned here! Don’t shop for a host based on how cheap their plans are! Always shop based on recommendations and experience!

4. Pay monthly. Have you noticed how these cheapo hosting plans require you to sign up for at least one year in order to get the low price! No way, Jose! You’ve got to be kidding! Never pay for a year in advance, only pay monthly!

What are you going to do if you’re not happy with their support? Get your money back! Good luck. You’d have better luck trying to pull teeth out of an alligator’s mouth. In other words, you may as well kiss your money good bye.

So you’re stuck with the lousy support whether you like it or not. And this is assuming the web host hasn’t already taken your money and vanished.

On the other hand, if you pay monthly, and you experience lousy support, slow servers or lots of downtime, you’ll book so you’re only out one month’s payment. It sure sounds a lot better than paying for twelve month’s and possibly losing all your money. Doesn’t it?

It’s always a good idea to pay monthly, anyway. Why? Because even a legitimate web hosting company could have something come up and not be able to honor your payment.

A natural disaster could put them out of business and they’d have no way to honor your advance payment. So you could lose your money! The moral of this story: Pay only monthly. It’s better to be safe than sorry!

5. Domain name. Never buy your domain name from a web host or sign up with a host just because they include a free domain name with their hosting package. Always register your own domain name.

The only possible exception to this rule would be letting somebody you trust with your life handle it. In other words, it’s critical! Why? Because a scam host might register your domain in their name so they would then be the owner and not you.

Technically, the person whose information is listed in the Whois is the owner. Whois is the public information registry where you can get information about domain names, registrars and nameservers.

It doesn’t matter if you paid for it or not. What matters is whose information is listed on the Whois. If you register your own domain name you’ll know for sure your information will be in the Whois. A good domain name registrar is namecheap.com.

To check a domain name go to register.com and click on “whois lookup.” Enter the “domainname.com” and click Go. The person whose name, address, email and telephone number shows up is the domain name owner.

And, just in case you didn’t know, you don’t actually own the domain name. You purchase the rights to use a name for a certain period of time. Make sure you renew it. If you don’t, somebody else could grab your domain name! So don’t forget. This is very important.

6. Whois. Turn the tables on a web hosting company and do a whois on their domain name. What you want to look for is when the domain name was created. If the domain name was created less then a year ago, forget it! The risk is too great.

When you consider, the fact, more then 95% of new web hosts tank within a year. They might be a great host but it’s not worth taking a chance.

7. Network speed. You can see how fast a host’s network speed is to your location by doing a ping test. This will give you a good idea how fast your site will download if you should decide to host with them.

Here’s how: Click start > click run > type in “command” enter > click OK > type in “ping hostdomainname.com” > press Enter.

Once it’s finished, look for the average ping time in milliseconds. The lower the number the faster it is. A good average number is 80 or lower. Any number over 100 is lousy (unless you live in one country and the host is located in another.)

8. Uptime. If a web hosting company guarantees 100% uptime they’re feeding you a line of bull crap. Every host must reboot their servers occasionally for security reasons and software updates.

So this means there is some downtime, even though, it’s minimal. If they never reboot their server it’s unprotected and will be hacked sooner or later.

9. Spamhaus Block List. Spamhaus is a team of dedicated people working to protect the Internet from spammers. Lets hear a round of applause! And now for the good part! They maintain an IP address database of known spam sources. The service is FREE. Wow!

It’s intended for email administrators but you can check any host you are considering to see if their networks are “black listed.” Or in other words, if they’re hosting any spammers! Here’s the address: spamhaus.org/sbl/index.lasso

Once you’re there, at the bottom right hand corner of the page > click “Select ISP by Country” > Select United States > click “Display” > and then check the list. Be sure to look at the Spamhaus TOP 10 on the home page, too.