Why do people stay with slow hosting companies?

There is one thing which has confused me for a long time, which is why do people stay or put up with slow hosting? From having web hosting since 1998 for various websites and the amount of hosting I have gradually increasing over the years. From various forums on the Internet and hearing from people, there appears to be a significant chunk who for some reason put up with their site being on painfully slow hosting. They complain and complain but never bother to do the obvious thing of move elsewhere! What do they fear? Why can’t they be bothered or care enough to fix the problem?

I personally have changed hosting companies a number of times in the past when they have become slow. Not instantly, contacted their support, and if had no joy within a week, changed hosting provider. One company even migrated me to a new hosting server which was great. Its not been small sites i’ve move either. One of my sites usually 600Meg space and a 140Meg database, and i’ve moved it a number of times.

If you run a ‘business critical’ website, but have it hosted on a slow server so that takes 2 minutes to load, and don’t do anything about moving it to a faster server, or a faster hosting company, then how business critical is your website really? How much do you really care for your website if you are willing to let it run like crap for weeks, or even sometimes years! If you don’t like the hosting company you are with, why are you with them still? It’s not like hosting companies are a rare thing, the web hosting market is one of the most crowded markets on the Internet. If you pay £50 a year for hosting, and you claim that you are losing thousands a day from the site being slow or down, then firstly you need a Dedicated server with an SLA ensuring that no matter what your site and server would be back online ASAP. Also what do you expect for £50? if you are losing thousands a day, even if you just write the amount off as a bad experience and move company then, if your monetary loss is a genuine claim, then losing £50 is better than losing the ‘thousands’ a day.

Weeks and weeks of slow website, can cause far more damage than potential 24 hours or so downtime as you move the website to another company or server. Finding another hosting company takes very little effort, it’s a very crowded market space. You can find out reviews and reputations for most companies all over the Internet. It is a case of deciding on a budget, is there a particular country you want the servers to be located, and what type of hosting platform you want to be on. Chances are there will be a company to fit your specifications and requirements. You would probably find the company within a matter of minutes too! Then its a case of purchasing the hosting, and then usually you can almost immediately start uploading your site to the new servers. Even my homepage as moved hosting and servers a number of times, the most recent move at the start of the year to a VPS, took about 20 minutes in total. The large site I managed to fully move within an afternoon.

Tweet me your opinion on the subject, or if you want help or advice on the subject.