Savor the Success - The Premium Business Network for Women Entrepreneurs.

For those of you who read my plead for support on the Premium Member Cafe, you know my plight of the website hacker who got me three times which resulted in Blue Host, my hosting company dropping me as a customer.  They explained to me that I was a high risk because I didn't do the necessary things to secure my website.

Now wait a minute.  This was my site, I own it and take full responsibility of it and I am not one to pass the buck of blame, but shouldn't a hosting company be somewhat responsible as well?  While I was going through this for the three times I didn't think so.  They gave me advice but that was all.  In the mean time I do all kinds of things for the security of my site.  I get daily PCI scans, deleted so many files that were old, changed passwords, changed permission, updated software.  But the hacker got me again... and then again.

It wasn't until Blue Host dropped me and I posted my plight on Savor that I realized it wasn't entirely my fault.  This hosting company should take some responsibility as the people they host are all on a shared server.  Don't they want to protect their other customers.  And as my dear friend Etta told me it wasn't like I ran some proprietary software that no one knows anything about.  The software run is typical of all websites.  Now, I have to admit, the price of Blue Host and their appearance is what sold me.  But alas the old lesson learned... you get what you pay for.

Now that I am rebuilding my site and had to find a new hosting company, I sought the advice of some old Internet marketing friends.  One suggested a company called West Host.  They are over double the price of what I was paying however, they keep up to date on all software versions and security patches.  They back up all their sites every 5 days and if there is a breach of security they can just set your website back to where it was before the violation occurred.  If you do get hacked, they also find the vulnerability for you so you know the source. 

Being a newer business, you try to keep costs down etc. but again I will say, you get what you pay for.  I hope this helps anyone looking for a new hosting company especially if you are going to have an e-commerce type of platform where security is so important.  So please, ask the company how they keep things secure on their end.  Do they do any updating of software?  Do they help you if you get hacked?  Do they back up files or is that your responsibility alone?  Ask ask ask and then ask again!!