Choosing a Web Hosting Firm

For managed service, you’ll want to ask providers about their service level agreement. This document tells customers how much uptime a host guarantees. For example, some providers will say they are up 100 percent of the time; others will say 99.9 percent. What you want to know next is how they will compensate you if they are down more often than they claimed they would be.

If you don’t want to spend the money necessary for a dedicated server, but need more capacity than a shared-host situation can provide, a virtual server is a good option, Capehart says. While companies using virtual servers do share space, this type of hosting differs from other shared services because only a handful of people are using it, rather than hundreds or thousands. Virtual servers can be hosted in-house or outsourced. Another key difference is that the server is divided up into individual “virtual” machines, so customers are not interconnected and cannot affect each other in any way. “It’s like you have your own mini machine,” Capehart explains.

Increasingly, businesses are also taking advantage of the savings that come from using a service called colocation, says Joe Caldwell, vice president of sales for Wayzata-based U.S. Internet, which hosts more than 30,000 sites. Companies that have their own server or multiple servers can rent space to have them (and other network and storage gear) housed off-site at a secure, state-of-the-art data center. For a monthly fee, you get space, power, a well-cooled environment, bandwidth, and security. It’s usually up to your IT staff to maintain the equipment either remotely or in person. For a price, though, many companies also offer managed colocation where again, they take care of everything. You just supply the equipment. “This is usually the most expensive service,” Caldwell says. “But companies have the assurance that everything is being monitored 24-7 and if anything goes wrong, we’re there to fix it.”

What to Ask

If your Web site data is on an off-site server and it’s important to you that information is backed up constantly, make sure you ask about that service, Perrill advises. You’ll pay more as the frequency of the backups increases, so ask yourself how much data you could reasonably afford to lose. Also, it is not uncommon for companies to rely on more than one data center; if one goes down, information can be transferred to the next. Be sure to ask whether a company is storing data in more than one location.

You have a disaster recovery plan and your Web host should, too. If disaster strikes, ask how quickly they plan to get your data back on line. “How well someone answers this question is a clue to how well the organization is run,” Caldwell says. “You want to hear something thorough, so you have a complete understanding of what they’re going to do.” It’s a good idea to ask some concrete questions about data center quality, too. Do they have backup generators in the event of a power outage? What kind of security do they provide? While some small companies feel comfortable signing on with “dark data centers” (which are unstaffed some of the time), most larger companies usually opt for those that offer round the clock on-site security, as well as monitoring of equipment, cooling, and power.

Of course, you also want to know about the level of customer support a provider offers. If you’ve got a problem at 3:00 in the morning, will there be anyone there to help you? “A lot of companies have so many clients, they may not have someone who can get on the phone and help with problems,” Perrill says. “I encourage people to come here and meet our support team, so they’ll know who’s going to be there to help. I even give out my own card and tell people to call me because, at the end of the day, that’s what customers care about. They want to know that their Web site is going to be there and that it’s going to work.”