I've inherited control of a site thats hosted on gnxonline.com. I'm aware of their horrible reputation, and competitors which don't cost too much more, which is why I'm going to switch out.

Now, I've made a jumbo spreadsheet of all the hosts in my ballpark, ~40 total. I've been narrowing the list down, but I know I'll still end up with several contenders.

Assuming they have the required features... how should I choose? I've searched forums for feedback, and most have good and bad reports. Is there any objective way to determine quality? Reliability? Any questions I could ask them that would have meaningful answers?

I know some people will say to automatically go with the host that costs the most ;) So should I put any weight on price (other than weeding out the too-good-to-be-true sort)?

Or should I throw darts and hope for luck?

Originally posted by karp
Any questions I could ask them that would have meaningful answers?

All things being equal (as far as hosting features go), ask:

Time in business
Client Testimonials
Location of servers being populated

Then pull a name out of hat. :)

Cheers

Gary

What gary mentioned is a great start you can also ask them about uptime over the past x months, and maybe how many servers they have.

If they have forums it's also good to check those, best to skim through some topics from recent to a few months back.

I generally don't really focus on problems people are reporting but more on the way the host responds and how fast everything gets fixed.

I would narrow it down to the top 3-5 companies, then spend a couple bucks on a LD phone call to them. Talk to a real person, get a gut instinct going on how fast/well they can answer your questions.

Voicemail, mail-attendants, hold times, distract me, and might be indicitive of future service when you need them most.

Ask questions like number of people on "staff" - including designers, tech support, billing, etc. Also ask if they have one server, or several, how they manage their servers, are they supported by any other technicians, etc. A lot of times, I've noticed smaller companies popping up, with little or no hosting experience, putting a box at RS or rackspace, and calling themselves a provider. Thats not a "managed" situation, and they've got no one else to turn to once their internal knowledge is exhausted. Their only recourse might be a server reload, drive replacement, or other such nonsense, which requires downtime for customers. A truly managed situation might be able to avert some of those potential trouble spots.

As for my company, what we can't handle internally, we entrust, and pay for the privledge of having another company stand behind us. If we can't fix it, we have the option of escalating to them - if they can't fix it, it probably CANT be fixed - but I haven't seen ANY indication of that.

Bottom line - get a gut instinct about the companies. Feel them out, and be comfortable with your choice. Don't jump on pricing - this is a committment to give your client the best possible service at a reasonable price.

Good luck with your decisions.

Joe