Digital Pure, LLC is a hosting provider, but we are also a company that believes in providing more to the client then just a solution.  We are VERY focused on educating our clients so that they are aware of the best solution for them in the market.  From time to time this this might not be our services.  We understand, and are 100% ok with this.  One of the areas that there is alot of debate is in a quality website hosting firm.  The purpose of this post is to try and help you grow your understanding of what you should be looking for when you are evaluation a provider (even us).  By asking these hard questions you will be able to determine if that $4.00 a month provider is worth it, or if you should really spend the extra money and get the more expensive provider.   If you have any specific questions, please feel free to contact us so we can help you with understanding what you need.

What Questions To Ask When Choosing A Hosting Provider

General Questions:

• How long have they been in business?
• What is their network and hardware SLA?
• What is their technical support SLA?
• What type of support do they offer (phone, email, ticketing system, IM, twitter)?
• Can you buy additional or elevated support?
• When is the support staffed (business hours, or 24×7×365)?

Network/Infrastructure Questions:

• Where are their servers physically located?
• Are the servers close to your projected user base?
• Do they offer additional locations if you need to expand?
• Who are their network providers?
• Do they own the data center they are in?
• Do they own the servers they will put you on?

Service Specific Questions:

• How much storage space are you getting?
• How much bandwidth are you getting?
• How much ram is in the machine you are using?
• What is the CPU used in the machine?
• How many accounts are on the same server?
• Can you easily upgrade and downgrade your service?
• Is there an additional fee to upgrade or downgrade?
• Do they offer support of 3rd party scripts?
• Do they offer on or off-site back options?
• Are you restricted to the number of domains, email address, databases etc that you can have?
• What are the overage charges for storage space?
• What is the overage charges for bandwidth?
• Will they warn you if you are close to your storage or bandwidth so you can make adjustments?
• Do they offer a insurance if you server gets hacked, that you will not be stuck with the bandwidth charges?
• What is the cost of the insurance?
• Do they offer a control panel?
• What is the cost of the control panel?
• Do they offer static IP addresses?
• What is the cost for an IP or additional IP addresses?
• Do they offer any extra services (domain names, SSL certs etc)?
• What is the cost of the extra services?

As you can see there is a long line of questions that you can ask when you are looking for a host.  There are many more questions, and considerations that go into the choosing of a quality website hosting provider.   We encourage you to ask though.  If they refuse to answer, that might be a good indicator of the support you can expect later if there is a issue.

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