Many web hosts are run by teenagers. The funniest story I have heard is one clients rant on how their website was down for a week. The host had no phone number and was not responding to e-mail. They had no way to recover their website or transfer it to an alternate company.

As it turns out, their webhost was a 14 year old boy who was hosting their site on his home computer. After his parents caught him surfing porn, they disconnected the computer and grounded the young boy. Of course the handful of clients the boy had websites for were out of the loop. Totally unaware that a small child was responsible for their websites and was now grounded.

Most web hosts do not even have their own computer but lease a small amount of space from another host. And they in turn lease space to another reseller and so on and on. Often having 50 or more hosting companies on a single server. Even with 10 clients each, that is too over crowded.

Worse than over crowding and slow performance, if any of the resellers in your upstream fails to pay, all the clients under that seller are shut down. That means your business could be closed, because a 15 year old did not pay his hosting bill.

Its funny, but not to those that have been in that very situation. And more and more teens are trying their hand at hosting. Check out this list of sites with teens at the wheel.

Jonathan of Dimensity Web Enterprises at www.dimensity.net :
Currently16 Years old.

Daniel S, Bub Host Owner at www.bubhost.com : 14, due to turn
15 on the 5th of May.

Aaron, a.k.a. amish_geek, Utaria Web Services, LLC at www.utaria.net
: 21 years old (as of February)…I've been making websites all
throughout high school hosting them various places.

Joey, co-owner of www.fastroot.com : 19 now.

Jonathan, a.k.a. KoRn, co-owner of Leonisknovo Productions Hosting at
https://lp-hc.us : 15, going on 16 .

Karl, President/CEO of Steadfast Networks at
https://www.steadfastnetworks.com : I'm 20…I had originally started in
1998 by reselling services…at the age of 14.

Their sites are impressive. They look legit and they truly are. But do you want to depend on a hosting company who's CEO is in school all day and checking on customers at night?

Thousands of teens are opening hosting companies. And thousands of businesses are signing up, totally unaware that their website is being managed by a teenager. That is, until it is too late.

We are not saying that teens should not fill the market place, just that a business should know who they are dealing with. How many websites go on one server, how many servers in a network, is there really a network or is your website running on a child's DSL line from "Windows Desktop Server". Will you hear, "My dog knocked over my computer" as the reason your website was off while the CEO of the hosting company was in school.

With the Internet being as anonymous as it is. You should check out your hosting company before signing up. Make sure they are the actual host, not a reseller.

Make at least one call to their number and find the answer to the following questions.

Do you own and manage your own servers? Or do you lease space or servers from a larger company, if so who?

How many employees do you have?

Do you have a corporate office?

How long has the company been in business?

How many customers do you have?

If the company does not have a contact number, do not use them! How would you contact them in an emergency? If you do not feel like the person is legit, move on. Don't risk cheap hosting when there are thousands of other options available.