Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : Your View - What Makes A Provider "Solid" ?

[cd/home]

Hello,

As the title says what is your view for a provider to be considered "solid" ?

Regards,

[Robert vd Boorn]

When I've been a client for at least a year and never had any need for contacting them.

[TWeber_TheSBA]

Originally Posted by Robert vd Boorn

When I've been a client for at least a year and never had any need for contacting them.

What Robert said covers it very well. The uptime of my site and quality of support when I do need help.

[48-14]

Originally Posted by Robert vd Boorn

When I've been a client for at least a year and never had any need for contacting them.

That's the statement to end the thread. Once your site is setup on a host and your email is working, there is almost never a need to contact them.

Usual conversation from the yearly payment customers;

How businesses
How's the wife and kids
Here's your invoice
Here's your payment

Talk to you next year, same host date, same host channel

[lynxus]

LOL. one reply. /thread.

I think maybe its good to contact them at least once for a minor issue.. Just to gauge how long they take..?

Ive had to contact my host a few times for very "minor" issues that are not service affecting by annoyed me... ( Could be due to the complexity of some of my solutions and needs )
They were always sorted quickly and politely.

So, to me they are "solid" even though I have contacted them.

Expecting a company to give you 100% uptime with ZERO issues is pretty much unrealistic.. But theres a fine line between the odd "small planned outage" or "very minor" outage and having a major disruption.

On a side note, Its always good to plan for major outages.
I tend to like keeping the main www / non www A record with a low ish ttl..

If I get any MAJOR faults ( touch wood ) I can redirect traffic quickly to a holding page with a very cheap solution on a different provider.

While downtime isnt good, The way you handle it can make all the difference ( Fail Whale, or just a page cant be found... )

[jcarney1987]

What makes a host solid. Well a decent backend funding, quality support response with atleast 2 hours but faster the better. 24/7 Monitoring system and daily offsite backups. Good customer relations. 99.9%uptime. Quality server(s).

[48-14]

Originally Posted by lynxus

Expecting a company to give you 100% uptime with ZERO issues is pretty much unrealistic..

So true, but then there is the two extremes. Some hosts I will see people complain, complain, wait for things to come back to and wait for it to break and complain and go on with this for months. They will check their site every morning and noticed yet again it's not working.

But then there are some hosts and servers I've seen that even if the moon were to hit earth, it never goes down. Check this week, this next month, check in 11 months, never down.


[QUOTE=jcarney1987;7999413quality support response with atleast 2 hours but faster the better.[/QUOTE]

Your point makes complete sense. Just to throw a wrench...some hosts have excellent servers but slow customer support, and then the flip side, horrible servers but support will answer you in 15 seconds.

[Spluut]

As long as everything is working quickly, you won't hear a peep outta me.

But if my site goes down or starts to load slow, I'll wait a bit before making a ticket, if it keeps happening to the point where it bothers me, usually I'll just change hosts because most will just tell you "well everything is working now".

[ajonate]

A web host is solid when he has a redundant failover server in a different city, in a different region of the country, and in a data center operated by a different network provider. If it's done right that protects against equipment failure, power failure, connectivity failure, catastrophic weather events, data center bankruptcy, and even a nuclear holocaust.

[jcarney1987]

Originally Posted by ajonate

A web host is solid when he has a redundant failover server in a different city, in a different region of the country, and in a data center operated by a different network provider. If it's done right that protects against equipment failure, power failure, connectivity failure, catastrophic weather events, data center bankruptcy, and even a nuclear holocaust.

Sure this sounds really great. But would you sell this to your customer as shared hosting for only 4.99 a month for this.

[ajonate]

Originally Posted by jcarney1987

Sure this sounds really great. But would you sell this to your customer as shared hosting for only 4.99 a month for this.

Of course. I don't try to make a killing off of high availability hosting. I just use it as a sales feature.

[gotlivechat]

Getting problems fixed.
Seems simple enough, yet we've come across enough providers (of any service) that say they're working on a problem, and yet it's just an excuse in attempt to hope problems disappear on their own.
Asking for a problem-free provider is not realistic -- but one that resolves problems in a timely manner is...

[ajonate]

Originally Posted by gotlivechat

Getting problems fixed.
Seems simple enough, yet we've come across enough providers (of any service) that say they're working on a problem, and yet it's just an excuse in attempt to hope problems disappear on their own.
Asking for a problem-free provider is not realistic -- but one that resolves problems in a timely manner is...

Before I was a webhost I used to try to hold my hosts to their uptime guarantee. No matter what went wrong it never counted towards their uptime. It didn't count if they were hacked, it didn't count if there was an equipment failure, and it didn't count if their connectivity provider went down. I've never been compensated in any way for downtime -- EVER!

[DanJo]

Originally Posted by 48-14

That's the statement to end the thread. Once your site is setup on a host and your email is working, there is almost never a need to contact them.

Usual conversation from the yearly payment customers;

How businesses
How's the wife and kids
Here's your invoice
Here's your payment

Talk to you next year, same host date, same host channel

L O L , that is true but I would prefer if the host provider will drop me a mail regarding their promotion twice in the half year...

[Kairus]

A host that I rarely ever need to contact for support, and when I do, it's fast and friendly.