Few Things you should Know About you Web hosting Companies

[smlbiz]

• How Long they are in Business
• Does they have any data center
• How many clients they are with now
• Do they provide 24/7 customer support
• Do they have phone or email support and response time average
• Their data backup system and frequency of taking backup
• Their billing policy
• Features they are providing
• Can they handle your growth

[seiretto]

This list makes a good start. But it is just a start.

Most of those questions can be easily answered by just reading their website, customer support is more difficult to check, only over time will you become aware of how good or bad it is....

Beware of 24/7 support - in reality if it is offered then in most cases the call goes to a telephone answering person - not a technical person able to properly assist!

[speed]

Another one is location of the actual server your site will be on, which may not be the same as the location of the company. Some applications benefit from having the server close to the target market due to reduced latency.


Their data backup system and frequency of taking backup
As shocking as it sounds check if there's a fee to have your data restored.

[danlefree]

Two recommendations to add: (if we're talking about general company selection versus selection based upon specific hardware/software/support level needs)


Service Level Agreement - Do they have one? If they have one, can you expect a refund or service credit for any downtime greater than 3-4 minutes? Forget "99% uptime" as the starting point for SLA refunds or credits: 1% of a month is about 7 hours (where I'm from, that means you're getting ALL of your money back for that month)
Buzz - If no one is talking about the company on web hosting review sites and forums or if you don't like 99% of what you read there - and yes, you can find out about customer service experiences this way - it's probably a good idea to keep looking


There are many web hosting providers out there and every hosting provider is a reseller of one sort or another (if they're not reselling hardware they're reselling datacenter space or bandwidth, etc). It takes a long time and a large investment in infrastructure to build up a sizable company and it takes a sizable company to provide consistent quality of service.

Competition with established companies' economies of scale means that the profit margins on reselling (at any level) aren't particularly good until a smaller company has at least a few hundred customers. You'll see a lot of hosting companies that start up in someone's garage or from a colo server and then disappear overnight a few months later - it's far better to go with an established provider (unless you don't mind switching hosts every year or so to chase bargains).

[conortreacy]

One more item with regards to backups; Check how often they're made, how long they're stored for, and if they backup not just the files, but also the databases on the site. One other part is to find out if the backup is stored in the same datacenter or if it's at a different location (in cases of fire, damage etc etc).

Also, verify that YOU can make backups yourself too - don't rely 100% on the hosting company. They can claim backups all they want, but be sure that you still have the ability to make backups and download them to your computer. Remember it's YOUR data - last thing you want is a "failed backup" and then you're out of a few weeks of data, or worse, out of business!