Managed Hosting the Truth

Image by Will Lion via Flickr

What goes on behind closed doors?

Many hosting providers do not make it a policy to notify customers when they experience downtime. What this means in reality is that your website was out of action and you didn’t even know. For e-commerce businesses, perhaps SMEs outsourcing software or white-label web services, this isn’t just an inconvenience, it can affect profits. Finding out revenue has taken a hit due to web unavailability is never an easy thing to swallow – nor should it be.

Make sure your hosting provider reports regularly on uptime – don’t take their ‘uptime guarantee’ as gospel. It should also prove its SLA (Service Level Agreement) and provide regular reports, rather than granting credits retrospectively for downtime. It’s also worth noting that large chunks of downtime are often excluded from credits under the guise of ‘trouble-shooting’. Have a conversation with your prospective provider and agree how uptime will be proved, what the process is, and what the definition of ‘downtime’ actually is. Also ask if they did pay out any service level credit in the last quarter and, if so, what did they pay out for. This will show you how often they fell short of good service. If it’s a high number, it’s time to look elsewhere. If they refuse to tell you, it’s again time to move on.

Understand what you’re paying for

Many hosting providers will offer an all-in monthly fee for hardware, operating system, support and bandwidth. This might seem like an easy option but the problem with these deals is you can’t see exactly where your money is going, so you could end up paying for things you don’t need. The best way to ensure you’re not taken for a ride is to ask for a breakdown of services and get individual quotes for support, bandwidth, additional hardware etc. It’s the only way to know what’s being delivered, what isn’t, and what is surplus to requirements.

Always ask about pricing for over-usage. What happens if you exceed your allotted monthly bandwidth or your back-up allowance? And how much more will it cost to add an extra GB of RAM or an extra hard drive? Over-usage pricing can be horrendous and a sharp shock to you monthly budget if you weren’t expecting it. Ask for the extra cost of things like memory, hard-drive, bandwidth and back-up to be quoted separately, as they could come back to bite you.

Know who is really hosting you, and do your own research

In some cases, a hosting provider will actually have a host itself. This means you could be getting a better SLA and a better price by going direct. The closer you are to the host, the swifter the fault resolution so it pays to do a bit of research.

One of the best tools to discover your real host is the anti-phishing toolbar from Netcraft: http://toolbar.netcraft.com/ – you could just use TRACERT but the Netcraft tool bar also allows you to see other sites they host. If you don’t want to ask your provider for a reference, but you do want to find and contact some of its customers, this is the perfect way to do it.

References are always good. One way to avoid being conned is the Alphabet Test. Don’t just accept the carefully edited ‘case studies’ they offer you. Ask for your provider’s references, ignore them, then choose any letter of the alphabet and ask for three references beginning with that letter. If they find this too hard you know they don’t have the high level of referenceability they claimed. Thanks to Henry Stewart at HAPPY for this tip.

Understand your contract, and your exit options

Many hosting providers will offer discounts on longer term contracts which may sound like a good deal. But if further down the line, the provider isn’t delivering, you’re stuck with poor service or forced to pay a hefty exit fee. Instead, sign a month to month contract. You may pay a little more, but you will have the flexibility to leave or alter your hosting agreement at any point which will make life easier in the long-run.

If you do end up stuck with a bad provider, it’s often worth paying the exit fee to switch to a month-to-month contract. Moving hosting provider is not hard or difficult, there are many digital agencies that can handle migration projects without difficulty, so don’t be put off about changing things and never resign yourself to bad service.

Dominic Monkhouse