Important questions to ask a potential web host provider

• Does your collocation provider offer personal tours of their datacenter(s)?
• Do they feature online (virtual) tours?
• How long have they been in business?
• What level of security do they employ?
• What is their uptime?
• Do they offer a Service Level Agreement?
• What are their Terms of Service?
• Do they have a money back guarantee?
• Do they offer managed services?
• Are their technicians not only knowledgeable, but courteous?
• Are they a one-stop-shop?
• Do they offer control panels, and which ones?
• Do they offer both Windows and Linux solutions?
• Do they charge setup fees?
• Do they offer BGP bandwidth?
• Do they offer cross-connects?
• Do they offer live chat support?
• Do they offer 24/7 phone support?
• Do they offer live event monitoring?
• Do they offer disaster recovery plans?
• Are their plans scalable?
• Will they customize a plan for you?
• Will they provide references?

I’m sure there are many many more questions – you may think of, but these are a great place to start. Finding the right provider with whom to entrust your data requires some forethought and research. Don’t over think the entire process. Search the Internet for positive / negative reviews, narrow down your list and then call each prospective vendor.

Gauge which provider best fits – your business model. How important and relevant are each of the above? Assign a value to each, total the numbers and compare vendors. Often, the correct match jumps of the page and hits you square in the forehead. Often the offer seems too good to be real – for instance, an offer of unlimited bandwidth on a VPS.

I would recommend assigning a heavier weight – to a disaster recovery plan. And also to their technical expertise, as it directly relates to the level of service you can expect to receive from them.

You’d be amazed how many hosts do NOT offer – phone support, or only during business hours. Uptime can be verified to some extent as there are sites that monitor hosts, but those do not necessarily monitor every router – so the numbers can be misleading. If your prospective host publicly lists anything less than 99.9% uptime, I’d recommend looking elsewhere. Downtime can cost thousands in lost revenue and disgruntled clients.

Do you recognize - their references? Are those references credible?

Even if your application doesn’t fit – a plan you see featured on their website, call and ask them if they’ll customize a plan for you. You may be pleasantly surprised.

Are you confused when presented with which operating system to choose – when selecting a web hosting provider’s hosting packages? You’re not alone. And no, it doesn’t matter what operating system you have on your desktop or work station – they don’t have to match your hosting platform. You can be using Windows Vista on your desktop and Linux on your web server. So what are the key guidelines to select one versus the other?

On a shared web hosting platform – both operating systems are normally priced the same. If you’re leasing a dedicated server though, Linux is open source (free) and Windows is proprietary to Microsoft applications that require license fees. If you need services like Active Server Pages (ASP), MSSQL, MS Access, Visual Basic or remote desktop, these applications are Windows specific.

Are Linux servers more secure – I see this brought up quite often in comparisons and the answers are all over the board. Very simply, the answer is NO. Both operating systems can be locked down tight – what I generally see are providers that only offer Linux platforms stating that Linux is preferred.  Both support a wide range of software applications, languages and databases.

Control panels do vary by operating system platforms – with cPanel frequently offered for Linux versus Plesk for Windows. Of the two, cPanel is more popular, but both are comprehensive.  

There are different flavors of each operating system – with Linux; CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu and others, and with Windows; 2008 Standard, Express, Enterprise, Web Edition and more.

My recommendation – is to match your specific requirements to the Operating System that best fits. If in doubt, call your prospective providers and discuss your concerns.

I shop the Internet comparing plans all the time – and I read a ton of reviews about a trillion different providers. It seems there are plans and services by the gazillion, enough to satisfy every client.

Which provider is the best for you then? Do you look for the big established host or do you prefer the small newer hosts? On web hosting forums, some providers contend that plans are black and white, and are very much focused on definitions – this is that and there are no grey areas or exceptions. I contend that the defining difference is the client’s specific requirements.

Someone with a personal website – about their Elvis collection might not be overly concerned with uptime or bandwidth, but may require lots of disk space for their high definition pictures.

Conversely, a corporate site may not be – as concerned with bandwidth and disk space as they are uptime. I read threads every day from OPs (original posters) on various forums complaining about losing thousands of dollars because their provider suffered numerous outages. These types of clients require an elevated level of infrastructure redundancy from their providers.

It’s not even the package that matches – your requirements, as much as it is the people and infrastructure supporting what you want – your specific requirements. Unlimited this, caps on that, we respond to tickets before you even submit them, we do offsite backups every evening, or we guarantee five 9’s – what does that all equate to if you’re the exception to the definition?

There are always exceptions to the rule – and every client’s needs and requirements are different. So how do you match your requirements to your provider? If they offer pre-sales live chat, go online and ask lots of questions. If they have a phone number (unfortunately, many don’t), call them – and ask lots of questions. The key here is – do they listen to your questions and offer solutions, or do they simply guide you to packages – trying to fit you into their definition of a client?

My recommendation is to – find a provider that is willing to work with you – to match their products, services and expertise to your specific requirements.

Questions to ask a shared web host provider

• Do they offer Windows and  Linux solutions?
• Do they offer an easy to use control panel?
• Do they charge setup fees?
• How many emails do they include their packages?
• Does their network have  BGP bandwidth?
• How much space and bandwidth are they offering?
• Do they offer any Dynamic Controls?
• Do they offer live chat support?
• Do they offer 24/7 phone support?
• Do they offer disaster recovery plans?
• Are their plans scalable?
• Will they customize a plan for you?
• Will they provide references?

I’m sure there are many many more questions you may think of, but these are a great place to start. Finding the right provider with whom to entrust your data requires some forethought and research. Don’t over think the entire process. Search the Internet for positive / negative reviews, narrow down your list and then call each prospective vendor. 

Gauge which provider best fits your business model. How important and relevant are each of the above? Assign a value to each, total the numbers and compare vendors. Often, the correct match jumps of the page and hits you square in the forehead. Often the offer seems too good to be real – for instance, an offer of unlimited bandwidth or disk space. That’s just not realistic given the finite limits on disk space and the cost of bandwidth to the vendor. 

I would recommend assigning a heavier weight to a disaster recovery plan. And also to their technical expertise, as it directly relates to the level of service you can expect to receive from them. 

You’d be amazed how many hosts do NOT offer phone support, or only during business hours. Uptime can be verified to some extent as there are sites that monitor hosts, but those do not necessarily monitor every router – so the numbers can be misleading. If your prospective host publicly lists anything less than 99.99% uptime, I’d recommend looking elsewhere. Downtime can cost thousands in lost revenue and disgruntled clients. 

Do you recognize their references? Are those references credible? 

Even if your application doesn’t fit a plan you see featured on their website, call and ask them if they’ll customize a plan for you. You may be pleasantly surprised.

• Managed or Unmanaged Services? 
• Contact Information – Contact information and procedures? How easy is it to reach their billing, sales and support departments?
• Competent – Are they knowledgeable? Are they professional? Do they seem genuinely interested in your concerns and requirements?
• Are they a middleman? – Are they a reseller, or does the buck end with them?
• Options – What add-ons/options do they offer? Are control panels, like cPanel or DirectAdmin included? Can they host Linux and Windows platforms?
• Longevity – How long have they been in business? Will their support hours change once school starts? Do they have 24/7/365 phone and ticket support?
• Staff – How many employees do they staff? It’s easy to get overwhelmed when you only have one or two staff to respond to requests or issues.
• Terms of Services and Acceptable Use Policy – Do they have a published TOS/AUP? And does this correspond to marketing material on their home page? An example would be bold marketing ads for unlimited bandwidth when their TOS specifically addresses termination procedures for exceeding allowable use.

Questions to consider when selecting a web host provider:

• Does your web host provider offer personal tours of their datacenter(s)?
• Do they feature online tours?
• How long have they been in business?
• Are they members of the BBB?
• What level of security do they employ?
• What is their uptime?
• Do they offer a Service Level Agreement?
• What are their Terms of Service?
• Do they have a money back guarantee?
• Do they offer managed services?
• Are their technicians certified?
• Are they a one-stop-shop?
• Do they offer control panels, and which ones?
• Do they offer both Windows and Linux solutions?
• Do they charge setup fees?
• Do they have failover bandwidth?
• Do they offer BGP bandwidth?
• Do they offer cross-connects?
• Do they offer live chat support?
• Do they offer 24/7 phone support?
• Do they offer live event monitoring?
• Do they offer disaster recovery plans?
• Are their plans scalable?
• Will they customize a plan for you?
• Will they provide references?

I’m sure there are many many more questions – you may think of, but these are a great place to start. Finding the right provider with whom to entrust your data requires some forethought and research. Don’t over think the entire process. Search the Internet for positive / negative reviews, narrow down your list and then call each prospective vendor. 

Gauge which provider best fits – your business model. How important and relevant are each of the above? Assign a value to each, total the numbers and compare vendors. Often, the correct match jumps of the page and hits you square in the forehead. Often the offer seems too good to be real – for instance, an offer of unlimited bandwidth on a VPS. That’s just not realistic given the cost of bandwidth to the vendor. 

I would recommend – assigning a heavier weight to a disaster recovery plan. And also to their technical expertise, as it directly relates to the level of service you can expect to receive from them. 

You’d be amazed – how many hosts do NOT offer phone support, or only during business hours. Uptime can be verified to some extent as there are sites that monitor hosts, but those do not necessarily monitor every router – so the numbers can be misleading. If your prospective host publicly lists anything less than 99.9% uptime, I’d recommend looking elsewhere. Downtime can cost thousands in lost revenue and disgruntled clients. 

Do you recognize – their references? Are those references credible? 

Even if your application doesn’t fit – a plan you see featured on their website, call and ask them if they’ll customize a plan for you. You may be pleasantly surprised.

I know this seems like a strange question, but I saw a poll on a forum this morning where quite a few web hosts voted that they were NOT legally registered, yet still advertising services online. Those services ranged from shared and VPS to dedicated servers. As a consumer, how would you differentiate one from the other? If you’re in Missouri, you can go to the Secretary of State’s website and search for Business Entities here.

Why are so many web hosts not registered?

In spite that US businesses are legally required to be registered, designing and posting a web hosting business online has become so simple that even teenagers and college students do this with regularity.  Some of them are very resourceful, have well thought out business plans, and work their plans successfully. On the other hand, many of these kids have no understanding of general business principles, thus struggle, along with their unsuspecting clientele. What happens when you sign a contract with a web host that is not legally registered, and run by someone, maybe 15 years old? They’re not legally bound by that contract because of their age. All the risk falls on the consumer. The answer as to why so many are not registered is varied. Many of these owners are tech savvy, but not business savvy. The economy is forcing many to find supplemental avenues for generating revenue, and see web hosting as an easy sell. Providing support after the sale is the hard sell, and this is what leads to so many start up businesses failing in their first year.

How important is your data?

If you’re considering which host to select, ask yourself this, “How important is the data that I’ll be entrusting to that host?” Is it mission critical? If your host should disappear, would your data disappear with them? If you have an issue at 3AM on a Sunday morning, will your host have anyone on staff ready to take your call and resolve that issue, or will you have to wait until normal business hours M-F 9-5, or worse yet,  in-between classes?

In web hosting, a marketing rage in the past few years has been offers of unlimited space and bandwidth. The only thing I can think of offhand that is really unlimited – is time. What kind of servers are these sites being hosted on anyway? What’s the largest hard drive physically available? If I wanted bandwidth at 1129 Tbps, would that be possible?

There are real physical limits on bandwidth and space.

The bandwidth available to data centers in the Midwest is different than the bandwidth offered, for example, in NY, Dallas, LA and Chicago. Data centers have to pay upstream providers for the bandwidth they offer to their clients. Some upstream providers with varying latency on their network price out lower or higher than others. Data centers routinely offer a blend of 3, 4 or more providers through BGP (Border Gateway Protocol), but can offer a preferred network with failover to a blended network – significantly reducing the end client’s bandwidth cost.

Are unlimited plans at $3.99/Month realistic?

In one word – NO. I’ve yet to find one offer of unlimited space and bandwidth at any price that doesn’t have a corresponding TOS and AUP that addresses the specific bandwidth and space allowable. So why do so many hosts offer these packages? It’s all about perception of value – to the unsuspecting general public. The offer sounds fantastic, until you buy into the plan and get canceled by that provider for violating some clause of their TOS. I read threads every day of the week posted in forums on the Internet by unsuspecting clients – wondering why their account was canceled by host xxx?

Compare this to your own business.

Do you find that managing your prospects expectations works out best? That ‘never needs sharpening’ knife isn’t really going to last forever, is it? Here’s a simple question to ask any provider that offers unlimited space on their webserver. How large is the hard drive that I’ll be hosted on?  Unlimited? Not by a long shot!

VPS is an acronym for Virual Private Server. VPS plans in the webhosting industry fall between shared and dedicated hosting, both in capability and price.

A VPS is a single physical server logically divided – into multiple virtual private systems. The physical server’s resources (CPU & RAM) are shared between its VPS accounts, with each having its own allotment, operated independently from the others. This separation allows each VPS on that server to run it’s own operating system, scripts or software (with some limitations) without effecting other virtual servers on the same physical server. It offers enhanced security over shared plans, as compromising the Operating System on a Shared Hosting Server impacts every website on that server.

With a VPS, you have – root level access to your server, allowing you to install/uninstall software, create accounts, set permissions, etc., much like as on a dedicated server, except at a lower cost. A VPS does require a different skill set, beyond shared hosting. As a VPS system administrator, mistakes can be made leading to security vulnerabilites. Permissions need to be set, files need to be managed and patches need to be run.

Narrowing your short list of VPS hosts

In the webhosting industry, there are a pletora of teenage and college level entreneurers advertising VPS plans to the general public via very slick websites and advertisements on hosting forums. Some of them run top notch businesses, but many are fly-by-night operations offering no redundancy and limited support, so how do you decipher which to entrust with your mission critical data?

Some questons to ask

1. How long have they been in business? How does that relate to how long you’ve been in business, and the value of your data to your business? Whether you’re an established business with 2 or 150 clients, would you entrust your data to a host that just registered their domain name two months ago and claims to have millions of clients?

2. How many employees do they have on staff? What are their certifications? How long have they been in the industry (on average)? Here again, there are hosts operated by one or two partners sharing responsibilites for marketing, sales, customer support, server management, etc. Do they offer phone support 24/7/365 or are you forced to wait for an answer between 9AM – 5PM, or between classes? Or do they only answer questions via a ticket system or email?

3. Are they offering unrealistic (unlimited) bandwidth and storage at ridiculously low prices? This is a clue that their marketing strategy doesn’t match well with their Terms of Service. Too frequently, those unlimited bandwidth sales pitches are attached to restrictive clauses in their TOS. The result of exceeding their projected allotment of bandwidth or storage for each VPS plan is that you’re frequently asked to upgrade your services or you’re terminated for violating their TOS. Could you afford to have your VPS terminated? On a side note, make sure your data is remotely backed up as part of a disaster recovery and business continuity plan. If your VPS service is terminated, very often your data is no longer accessible from that host. Terminated space on their physical server is frequently deleted and resold the same day.

4. Do they have references listed on their website? If so, call them!! Ask them questions. If not, ask the host for a list of references, then call them!!

5. Do they offer upgrade plans? What happens when your business grows beyond a host’s ability to support your operations?

When selecting a VPS host, use due diigence. Research the hosts on your short list. Read reviews of each on hosting forums or Google searches. And pick up the phone to call their references.

Query for referrals

Call them. Ask how they feel about the service – billing, sales support, uptime versus downtime, response time to issues and general competency of their support staff. Then do some research on the Internet about the company itself.

Security

Do they have physical security? Security cameras? Hand scanners? Card based access? Do they log visits? Do they keep updated access lists? Do they require advance notice to enter restricted space?

Backbone

Do they offer BGP bandwidth? Do they offer cross-connects? Do they offer low cost Cogent bandwidth, and does that failover? Do they monitor their bandwidth with certified technicians? Do they offer insight into their infrastructure – switching and network equipment? What is their history of up uptime and downtime?

Infrastructure Redundancy

Do they have redundant UPS / Electric Grids / Diesel Fuel Generators / Cooling Systems? Do they routinely test their generators? Do they operate more than one datacenter? If so, are they all fiber connected? Is there redundancy across multiple datacenters?

Quality of the data center itself

What equipment do they use – cabinets, racks, cooling systems, fire suppression systems, (smoke fire moisture) alarms? Is their data center organized – are their cable runs clean?

I asked this question of a member of a web hosting forum who asked for assistance from other members – for their recommendations. He had narrowed his list down to two Hosts over a couple months span of time. Then today he eliminated them because their customer service department had not responded quickly enough to his request for information.

So, here is what is important to him. See if this parallels your criteria/requirements.

·         Connection speed

·         Competitive pricing

·         Competent and reliable technical support

·         Pays for what he uses and not for what he doesn’t use

·         Doesn’t want his websites badly affected by other websites on the same shared hosting

·         Honest/ethical business practices

What is NOT important to him are ….

·         Testimonials on their website

·         “Unlimited” advertising on their website when there really is a limit.

My take

I suspect that pricing gets an awful lot of prospects in the door, but great customer support keeps them there.  Prospects normally allot limited time and resources to research a prospective host and those hosts all put their best foot forward to sell you (or oversell you). Once you’re there and experience issues, how those issues are resolved weighs heavily on whether you stay with that host.

I would disagree that testimonials carry no weight for prospects. If ABC Company hosts with DEF Company on your short list, and ABC Company is globally recognized, wouldn’t that sway your research? 

Recognize advertising for what it is. Hosts have a very small window to attract your attention. I’d encourage you to pick up your phone, talk to 2 or 3 hosts and explain your requirements. You’d be surprised how many hosts will customize solutions for you.

Uptime versus Downtime (SLA)

Uptime is a calculation of the amount of time a host is online, available, and functioning during a given time period. Conversely, downtime is a calculation of the amount of time a host (your server) is unavailable during a given time period.

Estimate your downtime over the course of one year:

99.9%: Uptime guarantee – Down – 8 hours 46 minutes

99.5%: Uptime guarantee – Down – 43 hours 50 minutes

99.0%: Uptime guarantee – Down – 87 hours 39 minutes

98.0%: Uptime guarantee – Down – 175 hours 19 minutes