Planning: Web Host — FAQ

The web hosting business, as with the telecommunications business in general, is extremely competitive. A major priority for all Internet services companies is attracting new business. This is good news for you, the consumer, as it makes the companies that want to be successful both price competitive and service oriented. But, how do you find the right one ?

Here is one suggestion. This may be a little beyond what you are willing to do to find the right service provider but remember that your service provider is very much going to be a partner in your business. Think of them as an extensions to your IT department, if you have one, and as your IT department if you don't.

So, let's plan to send a couple of eMails to 15 web site / hosting operations. What we want to measure, as much as find out what services they provide and at what cost, is how quickly they respond and how interested they sound in making me a customer.

We could do this under an alias so that we can cut them off at some point should one of them become too persistent or the email address 'leaked' to a spammer.

So, begin by setting up an alias at your current Internet connection provider, if you can. If you can't setup a temporary account, it will be temporary because you are only going to use it temporarily, at Hotmail, Yahoo! or one of the anonymous email providers of which there are many on the Internet.

Then, we want to send each provider the same message, and probably to their sales department. If a company should be focused on their own interests one would expect them to respond to email to their sales department quickly.

Something like this might work:

I am in the process of establishing a new business and want to find a suitable hosting company with which to place my web site and Internet services business. I don't have a large site, but I do want access to PHP, MySQL or PostgreSQL and, preferably both Control Panel and shell access. I would prefer to be on a Linux or Unix operating system platform.

I do not expect to have a high traffic volume initially, perhaps 40 or 50 unique visitors per month and limited downloads / uploads. I may need eCommerce capability later on, but not immediately. I am also considering moving my web site to a content management system. Do you have one installed that I can use or can I install one of my own choice if you don't ?

Could you please let me know what package, if you have one, will best suit my needs, what the associated costs are and what my options are for upgrading ?

Thanks in advance.

Once you have received a response to your initial request, and noted how long it took them to respond, you could send them a second eMail with more detailed questions. Perhaps something that might make a salesperson go and speak to a technical person or managemet, which test their internal communications a little.

Something like this might work:

Thank you very much for your response. I wonder if you could provide me with a little more detail ?

  • How many people do you have available to provide support and what are your telephone and email support hours ? How long can I normally expect to wait for support ?
  • What speed is the connection your company has to the Internet and do you have redundant connections in case one fails ?
  • What kind of recovery time can I expect if you experience a server failure ?
  • How many server and connection failures have you experienced in the last 12 months ?
  • What happens if I exceed my diskspace/ bandwidth allowance ?
  • Do you offer backup on your servers ?
  • Can I transfer my domain name and DNS services to your company ? Is there an additional charge for this service ?
  • What happens if I want to leave ?

Any additional information you can provide me would be greatly appreciated.

Evaluating The Responses
It is almost certain that a number of the companies you contact are going to have an auto-responder that sends back an immediate acknowledgement of your email. This is good because it shows that have thought through the customer acquisition process. However, don't confuse this with a response from a real person. You want to note that they have an automatic acknowledgment / email logging system, but you still want to see how long it takes a real live person to review your email and respond.

It is also fairly probable that a number of the companies are going to respond with a minimal amount of information, personal communication, and prefer to direct you through a direct link to the web page that describes their packages and services. This also is not bad as they are directing you to their most readily available, complete information. At least, this isn't bad in response to your initial email. However, you should evaluate the quality of this response based on how much personal communication is also embedded in the email and on the value of the content on the link to which you were directed.

Once you have sent the second email, and you may or may not want to modify it based on the information they have already provided, you can again time their responses.

If your second email includes questions to which they may feel they have already provided and answer you may get a sense of just how understanding the sales department can be and how much effort they are willing to put into clarifying matters for you.

By the time you have completed this process you should have some hard, objective evidence regarding their ability to meet your needs, and also some soft, more subjective feel for how you are going to be treated when times get tough.

It is far better for you, and in fact for the service provider, if you take the time to do his research. You are far less likely to contract for services you don't need and both of you will be more willing to work together to make the relationship work. Which is what you want. You don't want to be changing service providers / hosting companies every six months. This is not cost effective for you and not good for your business.