Questions on Web Hosting – Melbourne and Elsewhere

We are justifiably proud of our web hosting solutions but we also recognise that you may want to be able to compare our offerings against those of other companies.

To show you how confident we are in our services, we will gladly outline a few of the questions that you should be asking of other potential providers, as well as of Server Sentry.

 1. In terms of Web hosting Melbourne companies may wish to ask potential providers just how quickly they could make technical support consultants available in the event of a problem.

2. What are the hosting company’s published statistics for ‘up-time’ – in other words, for what percentage of a 7x24 period are their servers typically up and running?

3. What arrangements do they have in place for emergency standby service provision in the event that they suffer a major environmental or technical failure of their services?

4. Can they offer website import services for customers who may have existing sites on other web hosting services? If they can’t, you may be facing significant cost and effort to move your website to them.

5. What Security Systems do they have in place? Remember that they will be the custodians of your website and possibly data and those things are typically considered to be prime targets for hackers and criminals.

6. How long will their price be locked into place and will they agree to constrain any future price increases to specified levels that you can tolerate?

7. Are they able to provide reference sites of other customers who will be willing to act as unbiased commentators on the services they have actually received over time as opposed to what they were originally promised?

These are all very basic questions that any potential provider of website hosting should be able to answer easily and quickly – just as we can at Server Sentry!

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Web hosting, Melbourne and your FAQs

Here are some of the questions on this subject that we see regularly at Server Sentry.

What is web hosting?

Strangely, this can sometimes mean slightly different things in the IT Services industry.

Typically it means that your website and associated services, including data, reside on a third-party’s equipment and at their site.  It means you don’t have the bother of needing to buy and maintain your own servers, arrange for backups or put into place IT disaster recovery plans etc.

Sometimes, it can mean splitting your technology components between your own premises at a third party’s.  So, your data may be on your premises but your website and applications on a provider’s physical premises and servers.

Is physical proximity essential? 

In purely technical terms no.  Your hardware and software could be anywhere.

However, in terms of support to web hosting Melbourne companies may prefer to have a local services provider. Apart from anything else, it means that if a quick site visit or meeting is required, then it’s easy.

Is my data safe if it’s on somebody else’s equipment and site?

Yes, extensive safeguards are taken but this is an important subject and you should take this into account when selecting a provider – e.g. by asking what backups and disaster recovery plans they have.

Note that in some relatively rare cases, there may be legal issues to do with custody of data, for example, in situations relating to personal financial information.

These are relatively rare though and can be discussed with providers as required.

Will my hosting be available 24 x 7?

If that’s a service you have selected and paid for, then yes.

Make sure though that service availability promises are backed up by firm guarantees rather than just pious statements of good intent.

In the domain of web hosting, Melbourneproviders may be only too pleased to welcome you for a site visit and to run you through the specifics of their service availability hours and post-implementation support capabilities (e.g. their helpdesk services).

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