So, your current web hosting contract is coming to an end. You’ve enjoyed a good run together with your existing company, but now the time has come to start thinking about whether you’re going to stick with that same company, or move on to pastures new.

When we talk to website owners, many of us tell us that they choose to stick with their existing provider simply because it’s convinient. Sure, those too-good-to-be-true discount deals they got on that first term turned out to be just that, and sure the cost of renewing for a second term is sometimes as much as double what they initially paid, but it does mean they can keep their current website (or websites) flying high just at the click of a button.

There’s no complications, no wasted time spent looking for the best web hosting provider to suit their needs, and certainly none of the headaches that come from migrating their sites over to that new provider.

Yet for others, switching to a new web hosting company is essential, especially if that company has turned out not to be the ideal solution you thought it was when you signed up.

Not sure if you need to switch? Here’s our top signs that it’s time to make the move to a new hosting company.

Renewal rates on your current package are beyond your budget

When you snapped up that deal on your current shared hosting plan, you did so because it was cheap enough to suit your budget. You didn’t have a lot of spare cash lying around to pay for hosting, so you needed something that provided everything you needed at an affordable price.

Now it’s time to renew, you no longer get that discount rate, and the cost of paying for a second term is far beyond what you can afford to pay.

Still, you can’t afford not to have your website online either, meaning it’s probably time to start looking for a new plan.

Your website keeps going offline

Uptime is vital to the long-term success of your website, particularly if that site is designed to attract visitors to your business or eCommerce site, and to ultimately convert those visitors into paying customers.

If your site is offline, that means those visitors aren’t able to access it, nor are they able to purchase from you, so it’s critical that your web host can keep your website up and running right around the clock.

If it goes down once, you might be able to put it down to a one-off error and forget about it, but if it keeps happening, even if only for seconds at a time,  you’re losing valuable sales, and you’ll be well served by switching to a new host that can guarantee a greater amount of uptime.

You can’t get the support you need

Even top web professionals run into issues every now and again, and when that happens, they need to rely on having customer support available when they need it, how they need it.

Whether you’re trying to make the most of one of the features you’ve paid for but can’t quite figure out the set up, or whether everything that was once running smoothly no longer is, when you encounter a problem, it pays to have easy access to people who can help you.

If you’re frequently finding long delays when you try to contact your host’s customer support team, if said team are usually unhelpful when you do get through, or if you’re paying through the nose for telephone support, you might want to look at new provider that can provide all the support you need, whenever you need it.