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Q&A: 10 Most Important Questions to Ask Your Web Host!

By: Kaumil

So I was browsing through the blogosphere and came across this blog post and thought that I'd save those who are interested in our services by answering them -- so you don't have to ask :)

Here are the questions that were on the blog post:

Q: How long has the web host been around?
A: Legally, we've been a business since January 2008. We've spent most of the last twelve month's developing and coming up with new innovative ways to differentiate us from the rest of the herd. We officially started providing a service to the general public In January 2009, 1 year after development started. Don't worry, our team has considerable amount of knowledge and experience in the hosting industry.

Q: Does the web host own its data center?
A: No, we do not own or operate our own data center -- nor do we want to. We've selected a great co-location provider here in Toronto and Miami allowing us to focus on development and maintenance of our Clustered Cloud. We don't want to be messing with BGP or if our data center is cold enough, the fine folks we've partnered with do a great job. Let them focus on what they are good at and we'll focus on what we're good at. It's a win-win for everyone.

Q: How many hard Internet providers does the web host have?
A: We use Peer1 Networks & Saavis for most of our connectivity. Problem yet to be seen (knock on wood).

Q: Does the web host monitor its customers’ sites twenty - four hours per day? How?
A: Yes. We have several monitoring points across the globe. All of our guys are notified if there is an issue within 10 seconds.

Q: Does the web host provide 24 / 7 / 365 phone and email support?
A: Yes, we offer 24/7 e-mail support and offer 24/7 telephone support.

Q: What levels of redundancy does the web host’s architecture favor?
A: This is where we are superior to a lot of our competitors. We've developed a "Clustered Cloud", which is basically a bunch of servers working simultaneously to serve pages, images, mysql queries, etc.  If one of our servers or several of them were to go down, crash and burn (knock on wood),  your site would still be working as our redundant load balancers would direct traffic to the fastest available server in the Cloud. We use dedicated MySQL servers and purpose-built storage systems. We've done everything we can to weed out single-point of failures.

Q: Does the web host automatically backup customer web sites in case of message loss? How often?
A: Our storage systems create snapshots of data every hour. We retain those backups every 2 hours, 2 days and 2 weeks for you to retrieve data in the event of data loss -- every customer has real-time access to their backups. You can read more about our backup system.

Q: What is the web host’s billing method?
A: We accept Visa, Mastercard and all major credit cards through PayPal as well as plain and simple PayPal. We'll also take cheques and money orders. We offer an anytime cancelation policy and also offer an anytime money back guarantee.

Q: Does the web host prepare the features that you need for your web site?
A: Our web hosting service is fully featured. I don't think we're missing anything. Which means, in most cases you're going to be able to deploy your site immediately without any intervention from us. If we are missing something that you need, contact us and our development team can look into it for inclusion. No promises though :)

Q: Does the web host have the products and services to handle your growth?
A: I most certainly think so! That's what we were built for. Our service allows you to start at the bottom (shared equivalent) and work your way up to the top (dedicated and beyond), without having to switch platforms.

The questions are basic, but fundamental when looking for a host.  If you have any other questions, don't hesitate to contact one of our specialists.

January 6, 2009 | Filed Under Kaumil Patel, UptimeHost

 

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