The top 10 Most Important Questions To Ask Your Web Host NOW!

A guide to Web Hosting Essentials

Maybe you’re looking to build a web site or are fed up with your current web host and you're are desperate to transfer your site elsewhere? This guide will help you decide on a web host that meets your needs

1. How long has the web host been in business?
2. Does the web host have its own data center?
3. How many upstream Internet providers does the web host have?
4. Does the web host monitor its customers’ sites twenty - four hours per day? How?
5. Does the web host provide 24 / 7 / 365 toll free phone and email support?
6. What levels of redundancy does the web host provide?
7. Does the web host automatically backup customer web sites in case of loss? How often?
8. What is the web host’s billing method?
9. Does the web host ration the meat that you need for your web site?
10. Does the web host have the products and services to handle your growth?

The 10 Top Important Questions To Ask Your Web Host NOW!

by: Michael Haigh owner of bestcheaphosting

Maybe you’re looking to build a web site or are fed up with your current web host and you're are desperate to transfer your site elsewhere? You may not even be aware of your current host’s shortcomings in an industry where every month there is news about a webhost going down for one reason or another.

Your first problem is narrowing down the thousands of choices to a few that you can research further. Seek friends or associates that have a web site and ask for their hosting advice. Visit one of the many forums around the web deidicated to web hosting, ask the members for advice or search threads from those that have asked before you. Once you’ve located a few webhosts to research you should go to a research site like www.topaffordablewebhosting.com, and use the ten questions below to take you a towards making a great decision. You may be able to find many of the answers to these questions on the hosts’ web sites, but always feel free to call the host and quiz them about their business. The quality of the answers and degree of professionalism you get from a potential host often transfers to the type of support you’ll receive once you become a customer. Without further ado, the ten question to ask your web host:

1. How long has the web host been around?
2. Does the web host own its data center?
3. How many hard Internet providers does the web host have?
4. Does the web host monitor its customers’ sites twenty - four hours per day? How?
5. Does the web host provide 24 / 7 / 365 phone and email support?
6. What levels of redundancy does the web host’s architecture favor?
7. Does the web host automatically backup customer web sites in case of message loss? How often?
8. What is the web host’s billing device?
9. Does the web host prepare the features that you need for your web site?
10. Does the web host have the products and services to handle your growth?

1. How long has the web host been in business?

The length of time that a host has been in business can be related to their capability to provide a quality, reliable product. If your host can satisfy its customers, then those customers are likely to station with the host’s benefit. There are, of course, situations where this is not right. Ask about whether a host has recently been involved in a merger, acquired what was once a well - known brand name, or created a new brand. If any of these are true, then delve and into the story behind what has happened and determine whether quality resources are smooth with the company.
• Complete a domain name “whois” lookup on the web host: www.internic.net/whois.html. Type in the web host’s domain name and determine what year the domain was registered. If only registered in the recent bygone, ask the host about it. If the name was recently registered this is not necessarily a red flag. They may have recently launched to cater to your market.
• Type the host’s name into a search engine and check out the results that you get, other than those from the host itself. You may run across reviews, interviews, or industry articles about the host.

2. Does the web host have its own data center?

A data center is the foundation from which all services are built upon. If your host owns its own data center, therefrom they are likely fully entrenched in the hosting business. They also have an experienced staff and knowledge from which to draw from when supporting your web site and building distinct products. In other words, if a host owns its own facility, then it controls the variables that can make or break your web site.

3. How many upstream Internet providers does the web host have?

Your web site performance is not just an act of your web server ' s speed. Your provider should have multiple connections to the www. Accidental fiber cuts in draft or telecom trial and data locus equipment failure can cause your site to go offline for an extended amount of time. This can be avoided if your web host has other connections to the Internet that will re-route traffic that would have normally been carried on the failed line. Yes, this means your host also has extra capacity on hand to handle normal traffic levels when one connection is lost; which is another neighborhood where a host can cut cost. This is much like when driving your car, there are several streets that you can take to get to your destination. Sometimes you will encounter construction or a development that will require you to take an alternative street. Well, the Internet works the same way. There are several routes that traffic can take to a destination. Your host should be able to draw in the cleanest, or notably yielding, route to your web site visitor. In fact, your host should be able to continually offer these routes to find the fast path to your visitors. Another way to work out this is by minimizing the number of different networks traffic will go through before reaching its destination. It is extremely important for your host to have direct power to networks that have lots of servers.

4. Does the web host monitor its customers’ sites twenty - four hours per day? How?

There are a lots of factors that can influence the amswer to this question. Does the host own its own data center? If not, then they are physically removed from their servers and likely paying a co - longitude company to maintain monitoring for them. When another company controls the environmental systems that provide the services for the host, one can argue that you’ve created another potential point of failure; that being the communication of an issue from the data center to the web host. That point of failure can increase the latency between a belief and its resolution, resulting in increased downtime for your web site. If your web host has an issue with its own infrastructure, for as much as there may be travel time associated with their engineers getting to the data center to resolve it or, once again, too many latency to remotely resolve an issue.

5. Does the web host provide 24 / 7 / 365 toll free phone and email support?

You might be surprised at how many web hosts don’t provide 24 / 7 / 365 support. The industry’s hosts run the range from one email support to providing phone and email support 24 hours per day and 365 days per year. When an idea wakes you from a slumber at 3 A. M., it’s nice to have your host on the other end of the phone to discuss it. When your site malfunctions due to a programming glitch the night before your launch, it’s wonderful to have your web host on the phone to decipher the concern with you. When your kid accidentally deletes some important files, know that your host is there to help recover them. Also make sure that your host is providing support over the vacations. Many web hosts will close their support center, decrease their support to only email, or send their support team home with a pager to be called in position of emergency. All of these decreases can invest latency if your web site goes offline. And, holidays are often days which people will spend time on the Internet after they’ve completed all of their social plans.

6. What levels of redundancy does the web host provide?

Failures that cause your site to lose service can materialize. Therefore, it ' s crucial to find a provider whose hosting architecture provides the least - risk of failure. Redundancy is imperative. Single points of failure are very good, but many hosts attempt to cut costs by risking single points of failing. Ask your web host about their redundancy in server architecture ( web, email, and DNS servers ), strain - balancing, and file storage.
A web server is the hardware and software combination that serves requested web pages, files, or poles apart information. Servers answer requests from web browsers to provide information from web sites, email, and databases. They then send that information to the requesting browser. Load balancing divides the amount of work that a server has to do between multiple servers, which also adds redundancy, so that more work gets done in the alike amount of time and, in customary, all web sites requests within the report get served faster. The responsibility balancers stay in constant contact with the servers to predispose how busy they are and / or if one of them has failed. It may sound close a no - brainer, but having your site connected to the Internet is the complete reason for having a web site and a load - balanced, profuse network is required to that dry run.

Has your email server unusually been down? Redundancy is also vital for email and DNS servers. A Domain Name Mode ( DNS ) server translates requests to determine a web site. As you can imagine, keeping email and DNS servers online is a business - touch-and-go task for a web host. For line storage, seek a host that uses a reliable storage solution with multiple auto - avoid now and hot - swappable drives to certify continuous modulation of your web site.

7. Does the web host automatically backup customer web sites in case of loss? How often?

Backing up web sites should be a routine part of your web host’s operation. Backup is the activity of copying files or databases so that they will be preserved in case of equipment failure or any other catastrophe.

8. What is the web host’s billing method?

Kudos for a web host that provides a money - back guarantee. This will allow you to try out the host’s service. Should you find that the service is sub - par in site performance, reliability, or lacking the like that you seek, the ability to request your money back, within the parameters of the guarantee, is priceless. It is always good to idea to inquire about the web host’s cancellation procedures. There are many out there who require you to send them an email or make a phone call to cancel, which can keep at the time frame to cancellation. A host who is confident in their service will have a cancellation form or online advance within their control panel. Now, they will likely also have a retention shortcut, so don’t be surprised when they call or email you to ask why you are opening. Alongside undivided, your feedback helps them to evaluate their service.

9. Does the web host ration the meat that you need for your web site?

Sometimes people choose a host through it has the exact aspect set that they need, but later find that side set means nothing. Make sure that a host has your desired traits and is also reliable.
Use the following list:
• A domain name, but be sure to look for hidden registration fees or renewal fees
• An ample amount of versatile email accounts including web - based, POP3, and IMAP
• Email spam filtering and virus lee are a must these days, unless you are providing this on your own
• Enough disk space to be equitable your site’s needs
• Monthly bandwidth allotments that will cover your traffic and the ability to wax that allotment based on your site’s boom
• Site building tools such as extensions for FrontPage or other online / downloadable site building programs
• Ease of upload to your site via FTP or other means
• Way to a robust traffic procession procedure or the crude logs for you to process yourself
• Programming languages, including CGI, PHP, MIVA ( if needed )
• Ecommerce shopping cart alternatives
• Database capability, dependant upon your creation preference

10. Does the web host have the products and services to handle your growth?

You might be surprised how many sites that once started for fun or as a hobby have grown into some of the most popular sites on the Internet. Hence, you never know when you’ll outgrow your current product or service and need to move up the ladder to the next rung. Make thorough that your web host can reconcile your anticipated growth, not only within the product span of shared hosting, but should you ever obligation a dedicated server or co - location solution, your host is there to discuss and provide the best solution.

Finish your homework by using the above questions for a template and you will likely save yourself some major headaches down the road. If you’ve gathered information about compound hosts, you can now compare apples to apples and decide on the best host for your needs. Hopefully, the work that you’ve done will avoid forcing you to use your gut, but rather make an informed decision based on the facts. Perhaps, the best piece advice that you will find in any chronicle or forum is, if something seems too splendid to be true, thereupon it probably is.