What are the features to look into?

[arppt01]

What are the most important features that one should find in a hosting service? Please note the site will be running a forum and will have lot of downloads and uploads also.

[imported_TWD-Tony]

Forget about fancy site-builders or free xBox's for a start

I would list (in order):

1. Uptime (don't believe 100% claims though - they are false)
2. Support
3. Do they own their own servers (not a reseller / VPS)
4. Recommendation (be careful where you get this from though )
5. Security features (you will probably have to ask the host directly)
6. Value for Money

And the reasons...

The reason why I put value for money LAST is that if you take a look at a few companies (decent ones) you will see that their pricing is probably very similar - anyone else who undercuts these by a BIG margin is obviously either overselling or will go under eventually.

Uptime is NEVER 100% - servers & networks do have problems just like any other electronic item. It's how a company responds to these outages that is important.

Support - 24x7 phone support is very nice on paper, but it will cost a premium (anyone not charging a premium for it is lying about offering it in the first place). In my book a decent support ticket system that get's answered in a few hours is enough for most people.

If a host is a reseller then they are a small outfit - nothing wrong with that too much, except that sometimes you just NEED root access to a server to fix things.

Recommendation - don't get these from hosting forums! They are nearly always biased to some degree.

Security Features - Ask the company what software / hardware they have in place to help prevent hacking / defacing and DDOS attacks.

[Plumley]

Originally Posted by TWD-Tony

1. Uptime (don't believe 100% claims though - they are false)

I love the whole hierarchy but wanted to especially emphasize the importance of up time. My former host made some changes the resulted in it going from almost no down time to having it several times a month. It was never for very long periods but, still, the frequency was unacceptable. If there's anything more annoying than not being able to access a site, it's not being able to access your own site.

[arppt01]

Many many thanks to TWD-Tony for such an useful information. It made my task easy. I have one question though. How do I know they own their server? Do they declare it on offer?

[imported_TWD-Tony]

If you let me know who you are interested in - I can let you know if they are a reseller or not
Don't let the fact that a company is a reseller put you off to much - I started out as a reseller (many years ago) and I didn't make a mess of it

[arppt01]

Thanks TWD-Tony for your offer of help. At this juncture I am in a planning stage and I have not decided upon a host. Once I am through with the planning stage I will contact you with the details.

[ACCER]

I'm with the rest: It's uptime. I can work around most other problems (most of which are BTAC errors anyway) but I can't handle downtime. When I get downtime they get fired.