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Questions to Ask Your Prospective Web Host

By Jason Lansing on Jan 05, 2010 in Web Hosting Articles

interview When it comes to making a decision about buying web hosting, information coming from actual customers who use the service is very important. You can’t always trust everything that the hosting company’s sales representatives say because they are trying to close the sale.

However, asking questions by email or some other means can still provide potential customers will valuable information about a hosting service. The questions should be sent to the company’s sales department and not to their support department.

The purpose of emailing presales questions to a hosting company will provide you as a potential customer with the opportunity for measuring things such as how fast their response is, how accurate and detailed their responses are, as well as their attitude toward potential customers.

Many times responses coming from a sales department will not be as fast as a response coming from a support department. Some hosting companies may not answer answer inquiries to their sales department on weekends but have support available during these times.

As a rule of thumb, responses on email inquiries made to a sales department shouldn’t take more than 24 hours. The sooner you get a response the better.

The first step to take is to email the company with a few basic questions. Ask things that are fairly general but still important such as how long has the company been in business.

This first email gives you the opportunity to introduce yourself as well as see what their initial reaction is. Do they really want your business? Do they provide careful and detailed answers to your questions? Are they polite to you? Do they use correct English?

If they do a good job answering your questions on the first email, then it makes sense to send a second email.

In your second email you can ask them whether the features they include provide you with everything you need for getting your website to work. It is very important to tell the host about some of the details concerning your websites such as what scripts you are using and what programming language they were written in, how many visitors you average online at any given time, and how much bandwidth is used. Websites that are very busy use a lot of resources and aren’t suited any longer for shared environments and need their own servers. If you are just starting out you won’t have any statistics to go by, and it will be all guess work.

Don’t ask questions that are answered already on the hosting company’s website. They may not want to do business with you. Inattentive, lazy customers are not desirable. Some business actually choose their customers. Then again you may want to include a couple of questions that were answered already as a test to see if their staff is knowledgeable.

If any new questions come as a result of the discussion, you should send another email or call the company and discuss things by phone.

Questions You Should Ask

Here’s a complete list of questions to ask a hosting company. The harder the questions are the more respect you will generally get from a good company, whereas scammers will lose interest trying to keep up with your questions.

1. Does the company provide uptime statistics available from Alertra or other third party service? Ask for a link so you can easily view them.
Good hosting companies keep track of the uptime on their servers to verify that their uptime guarantee has been met, to be alerted when any downtime does occur, and to defend themselves against customers who give false complaints about downtime.

Two important things are how often the monitoring service checks the servers statuses and how long of a history there is for uptime records. The more frequent the checks are, the more accurate their uptime records will be.

The longer the company’s uptime history is the better. It’s easy to attain 100% uptime in one month, but a two year 99.95% uptime is a lot harder to achieve.

Some hosting companies monitor their servers in-house and don’t have an easy way of making their reports public. It doesn’t necessarily mean they are trying to hide something.

2. How long has the company been in business?
Like any other industry, experience counts for something when it comes to web hosting. However there are two things that needed to be separated: individual experience and corporate experience. There are businesses themselves that have been around for a long time giving them experience, and there are also new companies that are formed by people who have a lot of experience from working in the web hosting business for a very long time. In both cases the company has experience, although in the second scenario it is harder to prove.

3. How many employees does the company have?
Having a large number of employees can often provide greater dependability. There is less of chance that the hosting company will disappear over night. However, it is hard to verify the answer to this question.

4. Is support and/or sales outsourced or is it all provided in-house?
Many hosting companies outsource all or part of their support, and sometimes sales as well. How this works out depends on how professional and organized their suppliers are.

The rationale for outsourcing is that it is less expensive and these cost savings can be passed along to the customers. It is also a way for gaining a competitive edge. Some hosting companies do very well using outsourced support while others fail at it. The same can be said with in-house staff though.

It’s still a good question for you to ask. A hosting company that honestly tells you upfront that they outsource is being sincere which goes along with being honest.

5. For support issues, what’s the expected time for an initial response as well as average time for final resolution?
You won’t really know whether they are telling you the truth, but you will be able to compare the results you get with what their claims are.

Email auto responders and automated answering machines shouldn’t count as initial responses. Those are just automated confirmations and nothing else.

6a. Are you using a reseller account to sell your services?
Many hosting companies frown on this question. For a host selling from their reseller accounts it’s one of the questions they dread getting the most. Even hosts not selling from a reseller account may argue that reseller status doesn’t really mean anything and that it is the service level that characterizes whether a host is a good or bad one. I do agree with this, but only up to a point.

The reseller’s business, unfortunately, depends on the upstream provider’s quality of service. In order to maximize profits, many resellers choose low quality hosts which over the long run may not turn out too well. If the server goes down, all the reseller can do is ask for the matter to be resolved. They can not act on their own.

6b. Who is your host?
This question is the one resellers fear most of all. Don’t expect to get an answer. It’s an unfair question and it’s only natural for them to not share the information. If they were to tell you the name of their provider, in theory you could get the hosting service cheaper. All of their advertising efforts to get you to visit their website would be a complete waste.

7. How secure will my credit card information be?

8. Do you own your data center?
Most hosting companies marketing shared hosting rent servers from larger providers with their own data centers. It’s a major investment to own a data center. It makes sense for regular hosting companies to rent their servers until their business gets to be a certain size. Some hosting customers may not like this added layer. The reason for this is that the host has to depend on the staff of the data center for certain things.

9. What ways do I have for contacting your support team?
The most common ways for contacting support include live chat, instant messaging, phone, forum, support ticket system, help desk, and email. Usually the more methods the better.

Some people think that providing phone support is a sign that the company is serious. I think any business should provide a phone number for contact, but not necessarily as a way to contact support. With the internet there are lots of other ways for contacting a host.

10. Does the company have a money back guarantee? What conditions must be met to be eligible?

11. What is the company’s uptime guarantee? If the company fails to meet the guarantee, what form of compensation will I receive?

12. Will I have control panel access? Which control panel is offered?
It would be very rare for a host to not offer control panel access. Choose a host that does offer one and one that you are used to.

13. Is the company’s support free?
Although it is rare, there are some hosting companies that do charge for it. There are also some hosts that don’t even offer support.

14. Is customer support available 24/7?
This question includes what the company’s definition is of 24/7 support. Some people really want to have 24/7 phone support. If this is important to you, look for a host that offers it.

15. In terms of the server, what type and version of software is installed?
Usually you want the latest version, but a host may postpone their upgrades at times to wait until the bugs are worked out in new versions of software. If you do need a certain version of MySql, PHP, or something specific you should ask to make sure it is available.

16. What are the servers specs? What are the specs for the server where my website will be located?
Some people want to have their websites hosted on well equipped, high end machines. They figure that more powerful machines will have better performance. However, on powerful machines, hosts will often put more websites on them which can diminish any advantages that the higher computer power could bring. However if the machine is configured properly and is not overloaded it still might be faster.

You want your site to be hosted using a machine that the hosting company is used to. If your site is going to be hosted using a powerful machine that the host hasn’t used before they may overestimate the machine’s power and tend to overload it and again wipe out any potential advantages.

17. How many websites are put on your servers?
This number usually varies quite a bit, depending on the types of websites, the machines and other factors. Servers that contain websites that are more CPU intensive will not be able to handle as many websites.

18. What is the maximum CPU usage amount that I’m allowed on a regular basis? What is your resources abuse policy and how to do you treat offending websites?
This question is very important. You should compare answers from different hosts to see which company provides you with the best answer.

The best case scenario is when offending websites are moved temporarily to a free server or one that is almost free. Then the owner is notified and they are asked to upgrade to a dedicated or semi dedicated solution.

19. What is the average load on the servers? What is the average load for the server where my website will be hosted? What about the average CPU usage?
Compare hosts you are considering. The lower the numbers are the better.

20. How long does it take to create an account?
Some hosts advertise instant activation. Others take time in creating new accounts. This may be to ensure that the buyer isn’t fraudulent. Don’t be offended if this is the case. It’s always good to know when hosts make sure that unworthy individuals don’t get access to their servers. They could be spammers or hackers, and it’s better not to have them as virtual neighbors.

21. Will my account be scalabe? How are upgrades handled? Are there any additional fees other than paying a higher monthly price?
It is very important that you have the ability to upgrade your plan if you need to.

22. What is the charge for excess space and bandwidth?
Usually getting a sudden burst in traffic is something to be happy about. However if you happen to exceed your bandwidth it could be expensive if your host charges a lot for this.

23. Do you have a limit on daily bandwidth?
A majority of hosting companies only have monthly bandwidth limits. It’s a lot easier to accurately estimate how much bandwidth will be needed for a month than it is to estimate it on a daily basis. So it’s important to make sure your host doesn’t put a cap on daily hosting bandwidth. Be sure to carefully read how excess usage is handled.

24. Are there file size limits?
Most hosts do not limit file sizes that can be hosted on your account. However, if you are planning to host large files be sure to ask about this.

25. How ofter are website backups made? Are the backups stored off or on site?
The more often backups are made the better. It is also better for backups to be store off site in the event there is a fire or another disaster at the data center.

26. Is there a fee charged for setups?
During hosting’s early days, it was normal to be charged a setup fee. One of the reasons was it wasn’t as easy to set an account up then as it is now.

Setup fees today are often used to encourage longer commitment periods. If you pay on a monthly or quarterly basis you pay more than what you pay on a yearly basis and you may also be charged a large setup fee. What this does is make people seriously consider going for the yearly payment fee.

It’s usually safer to pay by the month and then once you are confident that the host is a good one you might want to consider paying on a yearly basis to save some money. If customer feedback is really exceptional and you are confident the host is a good one, you might want to pay on a yearly basis in the very beginning. Just be aware that if you do this that you are assuming risk.

The money back guarantee usually covers only the first thirty days. Not too many hosts prorate their refund. If the service starts to go bad after you’ve had it for thirty days and you paid for the whole year you might be stuck.

27. How many months will need to be paid in advance?
Some hosts don’t offer monthly payment plans or just offer quarterly, semiannual or yearly payment plans. The price may be shown on a monthly basis, but then the asterisk points out that the figure only applies with a yearly payment. Be careful and be sure to ask first before paying if there is anything that is unclear.

28. Does the price include the domain?
Sometimes a domain gets included, particularly if you pay for longer time periods. However, usually I advise not buying a domain name from your hosting company or get it bundled together with your hosting fee. It’s a lot safer buying your domain name from well known registrars. This will ensure that your name is associated with the domain name and you will have complete and direct control over it.

There are some unscrupulous hosts that buy your requested domain name and allow you to use it. However they own the domain. If you ever want to switch to a new host you will find yourself stuck because the hosting company won’t give you your domain.

29. Is there a free trial available for testing the service?
Not too many hosts offer free trials because hackers and spammers can expose them to all sorts of problems.

30. Is adult content allowed to be hosted on the servers?
This could be important if you are wanting to upload adult content or if you are against sharing server space with adult websites. Some people are convinced that adult websites will attract more hackers which could lead to the server being compromised more frequently. However, I haven’t seen any serious research done on this topic.

31. If there are specific scripts that you use (shopping carts, forums, etc), be sure to ask if you will be allowed to used them.
Certain scripts may not be allowed to run on some hosts machines, so you need to ask.

32. Can I use a shared hosting account to run my scripts?
If you have an active website, let them know how busy the website is as well as the scripts you are using. This information will help the host estimate what your resource usage will be and let your known if a shared hosting environment will work for your website.

33. Will I have Telnet and/or SSH access?
Some hosts don’t give customers access to such powerful features with shared hosting accounts, particularly with SSH which can be potentially dangerous in the hands of the wrong person.

34. Is there a site builder available?
A site builder can be very useful if your website isn’t built yet or you don’t have a lot of HTML knowledge. Different site builders have their own strengths and weaknesses. Before you buy anything ask to see a demo.

35. Are there any limits on the number of emails that can be sent in an hour?
If you happen to have any kind of mailing list, this could be very important. Many hosts do have limits in order to prevent resource abuse and sending spam.

36. Is Raw logs access available? Will a traffic analyzer be installed?

37. What forms of payment are accepted?
Most hosts will accept PayPal, checks, and money orders along with credit cards but you may need to ask if your preferred payment method isn’t listed on the website.

38. Read the TOS carefully and if there is anything you don’t understand, ask about it.

39. How many clients does the host have?
I usually don’t consider number of clients to be an important measure of how serious the host is. The number of clients also might not necessarily be equal to how many websites the company hosts.

40. How many servers does the company operate?
How well these servers are managed is even more important.

41. Do you have a list of customers I can get feedback from.
Due to customer privacy reasons, most serious hosts won’t provide this information. However some hosts may have a list of customers who agree to give their websites as examples.

42. Thousands of hosting companies are available. Why should I choose you?
This question is an important one. Can the host convince you they are the right company for you?

This is a long list of questions and you may a few more of your own that you would like to add. It is best to get as many answers as your possibly can to questions about a hosting company. However you may want to choose just the questions that are most important to you.