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Articles > How do I know if my current host is any good?
How do I know if my current host is any good?
The sheer number of companies offering web hosting services these days can sometimes make it difficult for website owners to decide which hosting company to choose for their needs. Often, a hosting provider makes so many confusing claims about the quality and dependability of their service that companies end up signing up with them, without really knowing what they have let themselves in for. Since picking a wrong hosting provider can have disastrous consequences, there are a few questions that website owners always need to ask, to determine if their current provider is any good.
Dependability and Uptime
Frequent service disruptions or interruptions due to bandwidth issues or resource availability issues are a fundamental indication that your hosting provider may not be as good as you thought they were when you signed up with them. The same is true with frequent security breaches and hacker attacks. A good hosting provider always has enough redundant network bandwidth, and hardware capacity in order to be able to handle sudden spikes in traffic or capacity demand You know your hosting provider is good if they use bandwidth allocation and traffic routing technologies to ensure that none of their customers experience performance degradations or service interruptions because of resource availability issues. A good provider also implements the latest firewall, intrusion detection and anti-malware tools to ensure the best available security for their clients at all times.
Service and Support
Another important measure of the quality of a hosting provider is their customer support and service. If you have to wait interminably on hold for customer support to respond every time you call them, or open a trouble-ticket with them, chances are good that the provider simply does not have the resources needed to manage customer issues efficiently. Sometimes, the delay in responding could simply be because the hosting provider’s support lines are so inundated with calls for help that they are unable to keep up. That isn’t a good sign either, because it shows there’s something wrong with the quality of the service being provided by the hosting provider. A reliable hosting provider typically always responds to customer queries in a timely fashion and resolves issues without the customer having to repeatedly remind them about it.
Does the provider own the infrastructure?
Another issue that has a direct bearing on the quality of your hosting experience is the question of who actually owns the infrastructures. Sometimes, a web hosting company leases its infrastructure from a third-party infrastructure service provider. In such cases, the company that is in actual control of the network on which your website is hosted, is not your hosting company, but the third-party service provider. To figure out how good your current hosting company is, you would really need to start by looking at the dependability and reliability of the third-party service provider in this situation.
Service Level Agreements or uptime guarantees
A hosting company’s willingness to commit to Service Level Agreements (SLA’s) and more importantly, their level of compliance with the SLAs, is a vital indicator of how good a hosting provider really is. To find out if your current provider is reliable, check if they offer SLAs. If they do, what kind of response time guarantees and service uptime guarantees are they willing to commit to? How will an SLA affect the price of your service? What kind of discounts or other remedies are they willing offer in the event that they are unable to live up to the terms and conditions of the SLA? Sometimes, hosting companies may not offer formal SLA’s especially when a majority of their client base consists of smaller to medium sized companies. In such cases, find out what kind of less formal, service availability and response time assurances they are able to give you and then monitor to see if they are sticking to those assurances.
How much control does the customer have?
One quick test to determine the quality of your current hosting provider is to verify the level of control you have over your own website. For instance, does the hosting company offer an automated control panel and log management capabilities that allow you to monitor and manage site usage? Does the hosting company allow you to run the web applications and services that you want to run, or are you limited to a specific set of technologies? How easy or difficult is it to install and take down applications? How quickly can you get additional bandwidth and server resources in case you need it? How quickly can you ramp down usage of such resources when you no longer need it?
Getting answers to such questions can go a long way in helping you assess just how good your current hosting provider is and to decide if it’s time for you to be looking at someone else.
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