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First off, I would like to apologize for the unavailability of this site for the past 12 hours. Traffic on this website picked up quite a bit, and as a result it reached its bandwidth quota. So that’s the good news. Things are better than expected and we’re back!

The downtime could have been avoided if the upgrade request was handled appropriately by my previous host, Globe Domain. But, it wouldn’t have given me the opportunity to learn and a valuable lesson. The old adage, “you get what you pay for” is particularly true when it comes to web hosting.

There are certain things in life that I always believed in paying top dollar for because it will save you money, make you more money, or avoid major headaches. This list includes:

• Legal assistance and advice
• Certified public accountants
• Insurance
• Financial advising

And now I’m adding web hosting to that list.

Choosing Globe Domain for their cheap web hosting packages was a major mistake. They are low in price, but the service and quality is shameful. As a result of being a Globe Domain customer, I experienced numerous outages for long periods of time, at one point lost all RSS subscribers, and received the absolute poorest support I have ever received.

If you choose a cheap web hosting company like Globe Domain, here is what you can expect:

• They boast 99.8% uptime, which is not accurate. They regularly reset their servers without notifying their customers about the maintenance outages and constantly have connectivity issues for 30 minutes at a time. Worse, when your site is down it is generally because their servers are down, which means you can’t even access their trouble ticket system. Which brings up another point . . .
• Their 24×7 support does not exist. There is no phone number to reach them and no email address, only their trouble ticket system, which is only accessible when their site is actually up and running. But, then there is another problem because . . .
• The turnaround time to respond to issues is days, not minutes. From what I can tell, Globe Domain is a two person operation that regularly takes vacations. When they do get around to responding to you, they are unable to help because . . .
• They have poor accounting systems. Once I placed an order to upgrade to a bigger hosting package, 10 days before the outage occurred, I immediately paid the service charge and noticed the charge on my American Express online bill statement. However, I was informed that they didn’t receive my payment and my account was actually past due.
• If that didn’t confuse me enough, when I sent them a copy of the confirmation email for my payment and an image of my AMEX bill, I was told they received my payment but I do not have any services with them and they did not have any records of my domain name. So, how did they resolve the problem?
• They closed the ticket. They didn’t have any answers so they were done dealing with the issue. They received their money, never upgraded my account, days later Millionaire Money Habits exceeded its bandwidth limit as anticipated, and they no longer respond to my inquiries.
• I have opened trouble tickets to get their attention since that is the only way to contact them, but all they do is close them with no resolution. My latest trouble ticket insisted a refund within 24-hours, as they have been unable to hold their end of the service agreement. I have yet to receive a response and have now turned over the issue to American Express, along with a copy of all of the trouble tickets that shows their clear negligence, and notified the Better Business Bureau.

I certainly learned a lesson here. Web hosting is one of those things you don’t want to skimp on, and all things are not created equal. All in all, things seemed to have turned out for the better.

I spent a good five hours researching the best web hosting companies and landed on Host Gator, which I already have been very impressed with. You can reach their support immediately any time, any day by chat, phone or email. I already chatted with a representative who I reached in moments and was extremely helpful, knowledgeable and courteous.

I spent a great deal of time on message boards and reviewed many web hosting companies, and Host Gator by far and away had the best feedback from current customers on reliability, value and offerings, and top-notch support. It also seems many IT people recommend them to their corporate customers. They have over 700,000 customers, so that goes to show something. Millionaire Money Habits is loading much faster as well.

I found a coupon code (MUSICA) that applies a $9.94 discount to the total, so you can try a month out for just a $0.01.

Millionaire Money Habit: When paying for services and advice, remember you get what you pay for. If the service is so poor that you need a second opinion or the job has to be done again, your money would have been better well spent with the more expensive alternative. In some cases, such as legal and tax advice, you will recoup the expense many times over. While having a frugal mentality can have its place in building wealth, there are times you are better off setting aside your frugal tendencies.