8 Questions To Ask Before Hiring Web Hosting Company

If you are considering hiring a Web hosting company for your website, this article is for you. With a seemingly endless choice of hosting service providers in the market and varied price ranges, it is a herculean task to compare service providers and choose the best one for your website needs.

You should get acquainted with some crucial Web hosting knowledge so that you know what to ask a Web hosting company before hiring them. Here are questions and a detailed hosting feature comparison that you should ask before hiring a Web hosting services provider:

Question 1: What is the storage capacity?

The foremost concern should be the amount of storage that the company offers. For most of the small and medium size sites, you will find a few Gigabytes of storage as enough. Some companies may also offer unlimited volume after applying certain conditions.  

Therefore, read the complete details or get in touch with support representatives of your service provider to get the accurate picture of storage capacity. Once done, you should go with the hosting plan that best suits your Website needs.

Question 2: What is the amount of bandwidth?

Many people confuse between bandwidth and storage because these two terms go hand-in-hand. In technical terms, Web hosting bandwidth is the amount of collective data that company will let you and visitors download or upload in a given month.

Once the limit of bandwidth is exhausted, the host will charge you according to the amount of visitors or data consumed. Hence, you have to keep an eagle eye on bandwidth consumption; especially, if your site hosts multimedia or allows frequent downloading or uploading of content.

Question 3: Does company offer email & eCommerce features?

Email accounts are one of the crucial parts of a good Web hosting plan. Many service providers offer multiple email accounts for your domains. You should pre-check as how many email accounts your hosting company will let you set-up.

Furthermore, do not forget to see their email receiving/sending interface and ability to integrate with other emails such Gmail. You need to also check if your service provider offer facility to receive email in your favorite client via IMAP, Outlook, or just POP.

In addition to this, if you run ecommerce site, make sure to confirm if company offers some key features such as dedicated IP, SSL certification, and one-click shopping cart software installation. You can also ask your Website developer to help you enlist those required features.

Question 4: What are the number of domains and subdomains?

You might need a subdomain, if you run a site that needs to have a blog. Furthermore, there’s a possibility that when your one Website is successful, you need another one. It may be painful to manage a hosting account for each site you own, so make sure the service provider will let you host multiple domains from a single dashboard. Before subscribing to a hosting provider, make sure if there is any limit on managing domains from a single account and it is also true for subdomains.

Question 5: Is there any database management & support?

Amid a plethora of database management systems, you need to make sure that there is alignment and integration with your site and hosting company’s system. Furthermore, since sites need to have a backend database, you need to ensure that your hosting service provider offers you the type of database system you are used to it.  

If you don’t find this mentioned in their services description, rush to their customer support; call them, send them an email, or have a chat with some CSR to clarify in advance and avoid any difficulty later on.

Question 6: Is there any support for frameworks and CMS?

There are many CMS and frameworks for Websites and blogging networks. However, not every host supports every blogging/content system or framework. Therefore, it is crucial to check if your Web hosting service provider offers compatibility with your preferred framework and also offers install facility in a single click.

Question 7: Do they have proper backup & security services?

In today’s Web management era, cyber security is a crucial component. Cyber criminals, malware, software bugs and hard disk failures may cause data loss from the sites. Hence, you should ensure a proper backup mechanism for your Website data. In this regards, you need to fetch a Web hosting agency with an authentic backup system that keeps record of files on regular basis. Some service providers a 24 hours’ of time period while others perform this task many times during the day. Furthermore, you can ask if you can download some copies from the control panel.

If your site deals with the important data of users like signup and card information; you need to give serious thought to this element. There should no compromise on security of the sensitive data.

Question 8: Do they have guaranteed uptime?

In case of machinery, there is always a possibility of failure. Power outages, equipment failures or some internet blackout can result in downtime. If the time is greater, there should be proper compensation from the hosting service provider.  

You need to make sure that there is proper power, internet and supplies back-up. You should keep in mind that 99.0 percent of uptime still allows for up-to 100 minutes of downtime every week. A good hosting company offers 99.999 percent of uptime or even better than this.

Wrapping Up:

Choosing right Web hosting company is crucial for the success of your Website; therefore, you need to be vigilant before choosing the company. Above mentioned 8 questions are must to ask from any Web hosting company, as their answers will give you a fair idea about the working of company. If you want to share any other questions that you think is important or want to share your views, you can write in comment box.

Andrea Laura is a very creative writer and active contributor who love to share informative news or updates on various topics and brings great information to her readers. Being writing as her hobby, Andrea has come out with many interesting topics and information that attracts readers to unravel her write-up. Her content is featured on many mainstream sites & blogs. You can follow her on Google Plus.