Hi,

I was curious, what specifically do you look for when you are looking to purchase hosting? I know Geek Certified has its own list of things to look for, but I am curious to see what people actually look for.

Thanks

I would say :

1. customer service
2. reliability of the network
3. features
4. price

Customer Service / Reliability of servers and network
Features
Price

I put the top two on the same importance level because both need to be solid. It's nice having quick customer support but it's a real pain when they need to be contacted every day because of a network issue.

Features is also near the top but drops in importance once you make the choice. If a host offers the technologies you need like ASP, PHP, MySQL, MS SQL then as long as they offer it then features doesnt need to be on the list after that. The only time after that would be if they do not adopt new technologies or if they decide they do not want to support MySQL any more.

All of the above plus, as mentioned in another thread, presentation. If I can't get the information I want from a hosts site in a matter of seconds, I'll go elsewhere for it. You need to give visitors to your site a great first impression so that they want to stay and find out more.

Thats a good item to add to the list. Clients need to find information quick. I find that support forums are good for this, and they do require the host to be good because if you have problems as a host then this quickly hits your forum

If you mean a professional website by presentation, that's important. I would add a variety of forms of support: ticket system, live chat, ICQ, phone.

Multiple support channels is good! Just make sure that they are all monitored. I hate going to a site where support is "offline". Even though there may be plenty of staff taknig emails, it still doesnt give the right message.

Who's Geek Certified?

It looks like some kind of certification system where you pass a test and get added as a trusted host. Clients can then browse this list. I believe findmyhosting also do something similar but with FMH I think it works on a complaints system and if you get too many then you get tagged. It's a long time since I went on that site though.

What method do you use to determine if a host meets your criteria as a good hosting provider?

Just lots of research. If I had to choose a host for a site of mine then I know a few people in the industry who I know run an excellent operation.

Yep, plenty of research, look around on the net/forums. One suggestion I heard a while back - which I like a lot - is to submit a support ticket and see how good/timely the response is.

That can work, but you need to keep in mind that a host would probably want to impress and give a quick response anyway. It might not always be a true reflection of their actual support.

It's only possible when you login into the system, and to do that you have to create your account with the host, which means you can't check it unless you pay money to the host. I was thinking about that method before signing with ahosting.biz, but it didn't work, so I have to rely on the way their sales rep handled presales issues, and, naturally, looking for feedback, both negative and positive. I was quite amazed to read at the WHT about a new promotion technique, which is creating a negative image of the company which is later destroyed by positive "reviews" of the satisfied customers. Seems really odd, as the company should have lots of happy customers at the forum, and if not?

I agree with what you're saying. It needs to be a careful process because it can be a pain to move sites between hosts. It would be most irritating to move to a host and then find you don't want to stay with them almost straight away.

As for the support ticket idea, I've come accross hosts that don't require registration to use their support system so it would work for them but you're right, not every host operates like that.

Ta,
Matt