With so many hosting providers out there how do you know how to choose the right hosting company? This is where comparing hosting companies before choosing is essential. There are some sectors where ‘three quotes’ is a regular occurrence. Yet, the digital/creative/marketing sector seems behind the curve and we don’t always compare thoroughly in order to mitigate our risks until it’s too late.
As well as choosing the right hosting company, we’d recommend a regular check-in to ensure that the working relationship is at its best.
How different can hosting companies be?
But how different can hosting companies be, you might be thinking? Especially if they are an organisation that you rarely (if ever) meet in person. Or they are a company where you never speak to the same person twice?
A good hosting company can save you time, money and even help develop the skills within your digital team. A bad hosting company can make you look bad in front of your clients. Asking the right questions before choosing – or at points in the relationship – can help you measure their performance rather than going on ‘gut feel’. Although we would always recommend that you trust your gut too, it can give you needed facts to see that you are getting a continued level of service or negotiate out of a contract should you need to.
What questions should you ask to choose the right hosting company?
The first step to choosing the right hosting company is to work out what to ask. If you already ask more of your other suppliers, such as printers, when you purchase their services then we’d recommend you see what questions could also be used for your hosting company. If not then we’d start with the basics:
- Price – Has the price increased? How does it compare to similar providers?
- Time – How much time do you spend managing your hosting provider? How much time do they take to fix an issue? And, crucially, how long do they take to respond?
- Quality – A slightly trickier one to qualify. However you could ask for their latest accreditations (we’d supply our ISO accreditations for instance) or ask a technical question (that you know the answer to) and gauge the response. This is a good way of seeing the time it takes and the level of expertise of your provider.
And then add in service specifics:
- Performance – What is the uptime of your websites? And how quickly does it load? Does it match the service level you agreed?
- Security – This should be a given but what does your hosting provider offer in terms of SSL? Or firewalls and security protocols? Are they conducting regular back-ups? And if they are, will they restore a back-up should the worst occur to your websites?
- Scalability – If you get traffic highs and lows or increase pages on your website can they provide a suitable hosting package that will scale with your clients?
- Environment – What is your hosting provider doing to reduce their carbon emissions? In terms of their hosting and general options? When was their environmental policy last updated?
- Values – A subjective question but does their purpose and mission align to your agency’s or business?
What are your next steps?
If you’re already with a hosting provider – or several – it might be worth asking the questions above through a simple document or spreadsheet to measure their answers. When the time comes to choose a new hosting provider, you have a benchmark to see if you are already with the right hosting company or to evaluate new suppliers. Decide on a time period to revisit the questions and ask again. This might be yearly if you only host a few websites or monthly if you’re hosting large volumes.
If the answers start revealing that it might be time to switch they should also start revealing what you need in a hosting provider.
Have a read of our report on ‘What agencies know about hosting (and what they really should)’ to see how your peers are working with hosting providers. Or get in touch with us via our live chat or a support ticket plus it is a great way to audit our response time!