Hosting is bought on a comparison page and lived with for years, which is the wrong way round. The things that make a plan pleasant or painful are almost never the things printed in large type on the plan card. Here is the list worth running through, including against us.
1. The renewal price, not the first-term price
An introductory price is a marketing decision; the renewal is the price of the product. Find the renewal figure before you buy, for both the hosting and any domain included with it, and compare on that number. A plan that is cheap for twelve months and expensive thereafter is an expensive plan with a discount attached. The same applies to domains: some extensions renew considerably higher than they register, and the difference is set by the registry rather than by the seller.
2. Who takes the backups, where they live, and how you get one back
"Backups included" is not an answer. Four questions are:
- How often are they taken, and how far back do they go?
- Where are they stored? A backup on the same machine as the site is a copy, not a backup. On our shared plans you restore files yourself from the control panel, which is the part that matters on the day you need them.
- Can you restore one yourself, or does it need a ticket and somebody's working hours?
- Can you download one? A backup you cannot take with you is a backup that only works while you are still a customer.
And then take your own anyway. Nobody's backup policy covers you deleting the wrong directory at four in the afternoon.
3. Where support lives
Find out what the support channel actually is before you need it. Ours is a ticket from the client area, and it is the only one: there is no telephone number and no live chat, which we would rather tell you now than have you discover at the point of a problem. A ticket has one real advantage over chat, which is that it arrives attached to your account and your service, so whoever picks it up can already see the thing you are describing. Opening a support ticket covers what to put in one.
What you should test is response rather than promise. Ask a pre-sales question before you buy and see what comes back.
4. The limits, in numbers
A plan that states cores, memory, storage and sites per account is telling you what you are getting. A plan that says "unlimited" four times is telling you nothing, because no account on a shared machine may consume the machine, and every host enforces that somehow. The honest version is a number plus a usage display in the control panel so you can see where you stand.
The figure most often mis-estimated is disk, usually upwards. Most sites use far less than their owners expect unless they are storing photographs at camera resolution.
5. The control panel, and whether you can leave with it
A standard control panel is a portability feature as much as a convenience. A cPanel account exports as a single archive (the cpmove file) and restores onto any other cPanel host, so your exit route exists on the day you arrive. A bespoke panel may well be nicer to use and will not do that. Ask what the migration out looks like before you ask what the migration in looks like.
6. Where the servers are
Distance is latency, and latency is the part of page speed no amount of optimisation removes. Choose the location nearest the people who will use the site, and treat a map with more pins on it than the host has machines as the decoration it is. Our status page lists the machines we monitor and where they are, which is a less flattering number than a world map and a more useful one.
If the project handles personal data, where that data is held may be governed by rules that apply to you. That is a question for a lawyer who has read what you are doing, not for a hosting page.
7. What happens when you grow
Ask what the next step up is and what moving to it involves. A host with shared hosting, virtual servers and dedicated machines can move you without the domain or the billing changing hands. A host with one product will eventually ask you to migrate away, and the cost of that lands on you at the least convenient moment.
8. The terms, specifically the refund position
Read the refund clause rather than the badge next to it. Ours is plain and not generous: payments are non-refundable unless we cannot deliver the service you bought. We would rather write that down than advertise a guarantee with conditions underneath it. Whatever a host's position is, know it before you pay, not after.
The claims that mean nothing
Three to discount entirely. An uptime percentage with no published remedy is a number on a page, not a commitment; the figure only means something if the contract says what happens when it is missed. "Unlimited" anything on a shared machine. And a count of data centres that nobody can check, which, if you want to test it, you usually can: look at the host's own status or network page and see whether the count survives.
Start from what a plan actually includes and the knowledge base, which is written to be read before you buy rather than after.