Questions To Ask a Hosting Company Before You Start

1. How long have you been in business? Are you incorporated? Do you have your own Merchant Account?

Varies These are questions geared at stability and long term continuation of web hosting service. These questions are important as you don't want to sign up for a web host who will disappear in one day.

2. How many customers do you serve per server?

Depending on the Web hosting plan or the Web hosting company the server that your hosted on might be a little more packed than you might think. A responsible Web hosting company will not overstuff the servers they own or collocate. Most of the time, sharing a server with several different companies is not a bad thing though. However, you do need to ask your Web hosting company about the numbers. If you are shopping around for Web hosting, you need to ask each company about the client per server ratio. Go with the company that fits your other needs, and has the least amount of clients per Web hosting server.

3. Do you allow SMTP POP3 email to be sent and received from mydomain.com?

You should get the answer: Yes

Some hosting companies force you to send SMTP POP3 email from isp.yourdomain.com rather than yourdomain.com. They do this because they claim 1) it keeps the servers fast. However, a dedicated SMTP POP3 server won't have any problems 2) it minimizes spam (however, spammers can still use technical tools for spamming from their account - so it really doesn't minimize spam). The biggest problem is that some Internet Service Providers won't allow the use of isp.yourdomain.com. It probably wouldn't make for a good day if you discover you had to change ISPs just to send email via your domain.

4. If I go over the monthly allotted bandwidth, what are the charges for each gig?

You should get the answer: $0 to $2 a gig

Watch this one as we have seen hosts indicate "purchase additional bandwidth for $0.1 per MB." That translates into $100 per gig.

5. Do you have any upgrades for each account, and if so, what are the costs?

Varies Most web hosts publish this information along with each hosting plan. It's good to ask if you can't find this information.