Choosing a web host provider is always a challenging experience especially if its your first time looking for a web hosting provider. If you choose a poor web hosting provider, this can cause problems such as downtime and bad customer service. Which is not good for your online business
Luckily, by asking the right questions can reduce the likely hood of getting stuck with a troublesome hosting provider. Check out some of the questions that you need to ask your hosting provider to understand whether they are the best fit for your business.
1.) Is there 24/7 customer service?
Never underestimate the importance of 24/7 customer service been available. What happens if your website goes down on a Saturday night. Do your have to wait till someone comes to work on Monday to fix the problem. That could mean a couple of days of lost traffic to your site. Find out is there 24/7 support.
2.) Whats your downtime?
No one wants downtime. Ask what there downtime history is? Ask your hosting provider how often have they faced downtime in past. And how they handle it?
3.) How easy is it to scale up if I need it?
If your website grows with more traffic causing greater demand on resources like bandwidth, ram and CPU. You will need to scale up. Will this process be easy? Am I stuck to the current hosting plan?
4.) Where is the physical location of the server?
The location of the server hosting your website has some important to performance of your website. If the servers are located in Australia, and you customers are in the USA in can increase the load time, therefore reducing your site performance.
5.) Do you offer SSL cert?
If your website has payment features like you use in a e-commerce website. You will need a SSL certificate to handle sensitive data. Some web hosting providers offer this for free for the first year but make sure they offer it.
6.) Is my site backed up? And how often?
Check with the web host provider, if they run backups and how often. At minimum should be ran at least once a day. Also ask you can access them through your cPanel and where are they stored.
7.) Do they offer free Web Site Migration assistance?
This is great to have if migrating from one hosting provider to another. It makes handling all the migration work for your website including all email, databases, websites, and applications a lot easier.
8.) How many customers are on each server?
If you decide to opt for a shared hosting solution, you’ll be sharing server space with a number of other websites. This can have an effect on the speed of your site, so make sure you ask your provider how many customers share each server.
9.) What is the security policy?
Find out what security measures are taken by the hosting provider to secure data. Ask how often they conduct malware/virus scans?
10.) Is there a money back guarantee, if I am not happy?
Check with the hosting provider if there any kind of money back guarantee, if you are not satisfied. Most of the top web hosting providers offers 16 to 90 days money back guarantee.
11.) What is the cPanel Provided?
cPanel is by far the most useful control panel for managing websites, and is made available by many of the leading web hosting providers. If it is not cPanel, what tools are offered? Considering choosing only a host company that has this one available.
12.) Are there any costs that aren’t specified?
You will want to know exactly what the web hosting service is going to cost. Therefore, it’s always important to ask if there are any hidden fees. Make sure you are clear on fees surrounding account setup, website migration and account cancellation.
13.) Is there any support for frameworks and CMS?
Ask if there are many CMS and frameworks for Websites and blogging. However, not every host supports every blogging/content system or framework.
Wrapping Up
Choosing the right hosting provider, is a great step to help your website grow. Doing your research and asking the right questions will help it choosing the right provider.
Please feel free to leave a comment below or if theres any other questions to ask!