What
type of support do you offer?
Once
your site is up and running the most essential thing you
need from your hosting company would be technical support.
Different company offer various type of technical support
based upon monthly fee and selection of plan. Some provide
toll free or round the clock (24/7), other may provide
email support or online manuals. Does your hosting company
provide support over weekend? Ask yourself, how
comfortable are you with company that provides only online
manual as technical support? Hosting companies that do not
provides technical support is not worth considering.
What
sort of equipment and software are in place to ensure that
my site is up?
Smoothly
operating Web site is a vital part of your business. You
want to make sure that the web server and other hosting
equipments are hooked up to an uninterrupted Power Supply.
Does your hosting company have website monitoring service
in place. Website monitoring automatically checks your
servers on a regular basis and if there is a problem, you
will be the first to know (via email, pager etc), so you
can begin troubleshooting before your customers start
calling you.
How
do you backup data? How often do you backup data? Do you
have any recovery mechanism?
The
more often is better but you should be looking for that
your web site host provider backs up every night. You
should also keep an up to date copy of your web site host
provider on your computer to be on the safe side.
How
secure your servers are?
What
measure you have taken to make sure your server will be
secure from virus and hackers attack. Get details about
anti-virus software, firewall and other security software
installed on hosting server
What
are your uptime guarantees?
The
best is 100% uptime (which I don’t think any company can
offer). Most of the hosting company offers 99.5% uptime
but anything lest then 99.5% is not worth considering.
Do
they provide log files or Stats?
Most
of the hosting company either provide log files or live
status. You may want to make sure that whatever log files
or status logs contain Information like how many people
visited, when they arrived, how long they stay on a page,
from where they arrive (search engine, other web site etc)
and where they might be located. It also provide other
information including their operating system, monitor
size, browser etc.
What
all is included in the monthly charge?
You
need to know what the features of the account are. You
also need to know what can you get for some extra fee.
Probably you'll need additional disk space or bandwidth,
or other feature like SSL, PHP etc in future, but you
should know the prices right now. ? Is there is any other
hidden fee, service charge or setup changes?
Do
you provide any money back or similar kind of Guarantee?
If
your website (pages and scripts) is already ready on you
local machine, you need at least 7 to 10 days to test your
site. You
might lose first two to three days during DNS propagation
and uploading pages. Always try to select a host that
provides at least 10 days of money back guarantee.
How
quickly you'll respond when I have questions?
Before
choosing a hosting company call them up or email them with
a question (above questions or additional question you may
have) and see how quickly they have an answer for you.
That way you can get an idea how quickly they will respond
in feature.
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