Questions to Ask Hosting Companies

Once you have two or three companies on your hosting short list, you need to contact each one of them and ask plenty of questions. This cannot be stressed enough: if you want to really be sure you’ve picked the right host, you need to ask questions before you sign up. If you don’t do that you could be unpleasantly surprised later.

Here is a sample list of questions (along with hints about what sort of answers you should get) that you may wish to ask a potential host.

How’s the Company’s Support?

There are lots of companies out there offering all sorts of features trying to compete for your money, but the most important feature is support. Tons of features don’t mean a thing if your host is missing in action when your website goes down.

• Do you have true 24/7 technical support? Some companies claim they have this, but when you actually try to get support you might find that help at 2 AM is rather sparse. If you can submit your questions late at night, this is a good test to see if they are serious about their claims.
• What support methods do you offer? Phone, fax, e-mail, helpdesk ticket, live help, instant messenger, etc. It is always good to know what alternative contacts are available in the case of a serious emergency. Always try to respect a web host’s chain of support though. If they want most of their support requests to come in via e-mail, don’t pick up the phone and call them every time you have a question or minor issue.
• Do you have any guaranteed response time for support requests? Most hosts will not have a guaranteed response time, but the response time should be reasonably short. If you are paying 40 USD a year for hosting it may not be reasonable to expect responses in 15 minutes or less, but answers in less than an hour for critical items and less than 6 hours for less serious support requests is a good thumb rule.

What Special Features does the Company Offer?

Many companies offer special perks with their service. You should be sure that you understand these perks before signing up or you may find that that special feature your host offers isn’t nearly as special as you had hoped.

• Do you provide free domain names with your hosting accounts? A domain name is typically required for web hosting so people can find your site. Some hosts offer free domain names when you buy web hosting from them. Be careful, though, as some hosts will keep your domain name if you decide to leave them, causing major headaches for you if you’ve spent much time promoting that domain. Domain registrars like GoDaddy, http://godaddy.com/ offer inexpensive domain registration, so if you have any doubt about your host’s policies you should register your own domain and not use the offered free domain.
• Do you offer a referral program? Some hosts offer special gifts or free hosting if you refer friends or family to them. Be sure you know what they offer so you don’t miss out on free stuff if you like the host.
• Do you automatically back up data on all servers in case of an emergency? Please note that regardless of your host’s answer to this question you should always make your own regular backups. Thanks to Murphy’s Law, the one time you don’t have a backup is the time that your host’s backup drive will fail also.

What are the Company’s Hosting Policies?

Amid all of the marketing material on your potential host’s website there is usually some fine print (or worse yet, some things aren’t even mentioned publicly) concerning the rules they impose on themselves and customers. You need to make sure the host’s rules don’t interfere with your current and future plans for your website.

• What sort of hardware do you use for your servers? Ideally, fast dual processors and at least 2 GB of RAM are what you are looking for.
• How many accounts do you generally place on a shared hosting server before you consider it full? Many hosts won’t be able to quote an exact number, but you are looking for an honest ballpark figure. If they tell you they don’t put more than 10 accounts on a shared server and you see their average account costs about $5 a month then clearly the host isn’t telling you the truth. A ballpark figure of 100-200 accounts per server on fast hardware is OK. If they use single Celeron CPU servers with 512 MB of RAM, then 20-30 accounts would be OK.
• Do you offer a money-back guarantee? If so, how long do I have before the guarantee expires? A good host should have at least a 14-day money-back guarantee so if you find that this host isn’t the right one for your needs you can move on to another host without wasting money. Ideally, they should offer a full 1-month guarantee.
• If I pre-pay for a year and then need to cancel my account half-way through the year, how do you handle that? What if I want to upgrade my plan in the middle of this term? Many hosts offer a discount if you pre-pay for a full year of service in advance. The host should always offer to refund any full months of unused service on a pro-rated basis. An example of a pro-rated refund: You buy a year of hosting for 100 USD and have used 3 months and cancel your account, the host should give you back approximately 75 USD (100 USD minus three months of service at 8.33 USD a month, 75.01 USD). Note that not all hosts offer pro-rated refunds (or even offer refunds at all). Hosts can handle upgrades in several ways, but always be sure you are getting your money’s worth.
• Do you have any uptime guarantee? If so, how does the guarantee work? Many hosts claim to offer 99.9% or greater uptime, but you may find that a host can’t live up to that promise. If your site is unavailable for more than approximately 44 minutes in a given month through no fault of your own you may be due some recompense. You should find out what your host will do in such cases. Make a note of any limitations on the guarantee. For example, your host might only guarantee the data center in which the server is located will be up 99.9% each month and not your particular server. If you have a good host they will always try to make things right for their clients after an excessive amount of unplanned downtime without being prodded. Since the host has a business to run don’t expect a free month of hosting every time your site is only available 99.8% that month, but they should always offer some sort of recompense.
• What happens if I use more bandwidth than my plan allows? cPanel hosts should tell you that your account will be suspended if you go over your bandwidth limit until you either buy extra bandwidth or the first of the next calendar month rolls around. Do not buy hosting from any company that says they automatically charge your credit card for every extra GB of bandwidth you use. While this might seem like a nice feature, it is very dangerous. All it takes is a mention of your website on another major site or in the news and you could find yourself with a bandwidth bill of thousands of dollars.
• What sort of content do you allow on your servers? Some hosts do not allow certain kinds of content on their servers and you should know what the restrictions are before you sign up. Some hosts do not allow adult hosting or IRC servers, for example. Further, some place restrictions on the types of media you can host. If you want to host your band’s website and your host does not permit hosting of music or video files, you may want to look elsewhere.

If your potential web host answers too many questions in an unsatisfactory way, you probably should move on to evaluating the next host on your list. It is important to always be sure to look for and read the Terms of Service or Acceptable Use policies of any host you are interested in. If you cannot find these legal documents be sure to ask about them. These items may be dry or a difficult read but failing to read them can lead to nasty surprises later.