Web Hosting: Screening Potential Hosts

  • Once you have list of potential candidates for hosting your new business venture, ask for a quote for hosting your site. Provide them with the list of your site's needs that you prepared above, give them a reasonable amount of time to respond, and then see what you get back.

  • If they don't respond to your request by the deadline you've given them then take them off the list. Use that as an indicator of what future dealings with them might be like and move on to the other candidates.

  • Ask the host these specific questions regarding their service:
    1. Are there any setup fees?
    2. Do they offer design or programming services if you should need them and what are the costs?
    3. How much free support can you get?
    4. When is there a fee for support?
    5. How do you go about canceling your account, and is there a fee involved?
    6. What tools and software do they offer?
    7. What is their uptime guarantee and how do they compensate you for lost time? (You can have your site uptime monitored by Alertsite, or NetMechanic.)
    8. How much data transfer (or bandwidth) do they offer?
    9. What is their backup method and schedule?
    10. How much space can your site use?
    11. What are their upgrade policies if your site grows?

    Beware of hosts offering unlimited data transfers and unlimited site storage. Those things cost them money and they're gambling that your site (and others) won't use as much as you think, but when your usage increases you may be stuck with additional charges.

  • Ask them for a list of clients for you to contact as references. Then CONTACT them. The host's simple good-will act of providing you with a reference list doesn't always mean the clients will have all favorable comments about them. (Although many probably will or they would have been screened out by the host in the first place!)

  • When you call the references ask them:

    1. about the downtime they've experienced and how closely it matches what the host has said is average
    2. about how well they've been reimbursed for this downtime.
    3. about how well the host has been about customer support and service
    4. and anything else you can think of!

  • Test out their customer support by dropping them an e-mail and seeing how long it takes them to respond. Or, call them at random times and see how helpful and accessible they are.
So, the main thing here is to do your homework. Do a test drive if you can. Then just make the best decision you can based on what you know about your hosting candidates. If you do get into a bad host relationship all it can cost you is time, money, and a little bit of aggravation.