Introduction
Internet hosting reviews strategies
Distance is no barrier on the Internet.
When in doubt - email!
Continued
The Unlimited Bandwidth Banshee.

The first step in tracking down the best and most affordable web hosting company for your needs is to hit your favorite search engine and visit web hosting firms. Start collecting email addresses of the various companies. Briefly look around the site to see if their offer seems interesting. If their site doesn't function correctly, best to move on. Take a look at the company profile, if there isn't one that details the company (rather than how good they claim to be), run like hell! The rest of your initial enquiries can be handled via email.

Be straightforward when you send out your note to the hosting services, let them know that you are shopping around. You can make this clear by putting all the company addresses in the CC field of your email. This review strategy will quickly weed out the companies who genuinely want your business and also allow you to easily run through an initial cull. It will also save you valuable hours in research.

The criteria for the first cull is simple - if they don't respond to your enquiry within 24 hours, delete them from your contenders list. The same goes if they just send you links to promo material without any personalised message text. To make it more interesting, send your email late on a Saturday night - wherever the hosting company is in the world, it will be the weekend.

The rationale behind the 24 hour deadline is this - if a web hosting company can't respond with pre-sales questions quickly, it may be an indication of what their customer support is like. Also, many web hosts don't see the "big picture" - which is a fatal mistake. You may be starting out small, but who knows how big you'll become and how many other people you will refer to their service? A forward thinking company recognises this and reacts appropriately.

Don't make it too hard on the hosting companies in your email to start off with, you can ask more detailed questions as you reduce the list of possibilities. The following is a template that you might like to use.

The template email:

This example would be suitable for most personal and business startups for initial enquiries. More complex and technical points for consideration will be covered in the next article in this series.

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"Dear Sales,

I am currently in the market for a good web hosting service with excellent customer support and you are among a number of hosting services I am

reviewing. I have taken a quick look at what you have to offer on your web site, but with so many services offering so many different options

- it can be pretty confusing. I would greatly appreciate you answering a few questions and your recommendations for a plan that would suit my

purposes.

Here is a list of my basic current needs:

- At least 50 meg of Hard Drive space (Note: change this to suit)
- At least 1 gig of Bandwidth per month (Note: change this to suit. 1 gig is plenty for most to start out with - BEWARE SERVICES OFFERING

UNLIMITED BANDWIDTH - discussed later in this article)
- At least 20 email addresses (Note: change this to suit)
- FrontPage 2002 Extensions (even if you don't use FrontPage, handy to have)
- PHP 4 (even if you don't need this initially)
- Perl 5 (for running scripts)
- MySQL (database capabilities)
- FTP access
- Server logs access (for in-depth web site traffic studies later on)
- Web site traffic monitoring reports
- Easy to use admin interface (believe me, some web hosting control panels look like a dogs breakfast!)
- (Any other specific needs)

What would you recommend, bearing in mind that I'll need plenty of room to grow. Please also send the URLs of the suggested package and upgrade options pages. (Many of your questions will be answered on these pages, links will save you from having to hunt around on their sites)

Questions:

-Is there a setup fee?
(A setup fee is not necessarily a terrible thing, it just needs to be factored into your budget)

-What is your uptime guarantee and downtime compensation policy?
(Look for at least 99.5% uptime over a month with compensation should it fall below that. If they aren't prepared to give you an uptime guarantee or compensation statement - forget it. It means that they don't have confidence in their equipment)

-Can I upgrade my plan at any time?
(A good hosting service will allow you to change your plan at any time without penalties)

-What are your excess bandwidth charges?
(Although unlikely you will get excess traffic during start-up phase, it's important to know how much you will be charged if you use over and

above your quota for data transfer. Data transfer or "bandwidth" refers to the amount of data going in and out of your site e.g. publishing up

information or requests from visitors for information including page views.

-Is there a minimum contract?
(Some web hosts offer excellent prices, but when examining the fine print you may discover that in order to get good prices you must take out a contract for X months).

-How often will my site be backed up?
(In a number of cases, you'll find that the cheaper the price, the less likely your site will be backed up on a regular basis)

-Do you offer secure server and ecommerce capabilities (shopping carts etc.) as an upgrade?
(You may not want this in the beginning, but it's handy to have)

-Do you offer an affiliate program or referrer bonuses?
(If you settle with a host and you are happy with the service, no doubt you'll tell others. Why not profit from that - it can subsidise the running of your site or even turn into a good earner for you!)

-Is your free tech support available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? What is your average response time?
(A VERY important point - many offer this but sometimes all you'll get is a recorded or autoresponder message during weekends and in the early hours of the morning. Telephone support is not a necessity - a good email support system is actually better than the phone as it provides a record for both parties. I've noticed that many helpdesk telephone support people have very little technical knowledge - they tend to rely on "wizards".)

- Just how large will my web site be permitted to grow while being hosted by your company in terms of hard drive space and data transfer.
(Some web site hosting services only want very small accounts - start getting any serious traffic and they may ask you to leave)

Thank you for taking the time to answer these questions

Me.

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Michael Bloch
www.tamingthebeast.netMichael Bloch
Taming the Beast.net
http://www.tamingthebeast.ne...
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