Earlier this week I covered the customer service aspects when buying web hosting. Now I want to cover the second quality in a web hosting company I examine when looking for a new hosting company, server reliability. If there was ever one thing that webmasters all over the world and throughout the galaxy need, is a web hosting company that keeps our websites online 24/7. In order for visitors to experience our websites, they need to be online. Understanding what goes on within a hosting company can help you get an insiders view on looking for a reliable server to place your website on.

Testing server uptime and speed

Each server within a hosting company is different. There could be a server that has never gone down for the last year, while another server within the same company could be going down daily. Obviously for those on that server going down daily, I feel for you, I’ve been there myself. The best way to test reliability and even speed of a hosting company is to actually use them. This way you can actually test the server your website will be on. Those 30 day guarantees come in handy for this type of testing. You can signup early and test the service and if it does not meet your needs, just get your money back.

Another way that does not require you to signup, is possibly finding out if they have other customers website you can visit or if they have a test ip address. Check out their community forums for any customers there that are willing to provide their website links also. Testing their customers websites will mostly give you an overall idea of their network, not necessarily the server you will be placed on. If you are basing the server speed based on their main website, you should consider the fact that they probably have a dedicated server for it, so it does not share the same amount of users.

Server monitoring and response policies

Server reliability relies strongly on your administrators response to server issues. If they are actively monitoring their network for problems and are notified immediately, than they will be able to resolve any issues that occur quickly. Make sure you ask your new hosts if they do actively monitor their servers, what systems they have place for monitoring, and what their responses will be like.

Typically when a server goes down, the admin team should be notified through their own monitoring system they have setup. By the time you contact them to find out what is happening, they should have an answer other than “Thanks for letting us know”. Unless of course you are like me and responded 2 seconds after you get your own notification. About 10-15 minutes after the issue first occurred they should already know about it and be responding. If the problem is dedicated to your account only, they will most likely not know about the issue as they do not monitor individual accounts, but only the entire server.

Make sure they do routine server maintenance

Server maintenance is another aspect that determines server reliability. Just as your scripts for your website need to be updated regularly, so does the software and hardware on your server. PHP, Operating System, Perl, Apache, MySQL and a lot of other software needs to be maintained to keep the server safe from hackers and to keep your scripts running. The hardware on the server also needs to be maintained such as RAM, harddrives, and CPU. If they are not tested and replaced regularly they can fail and data will be lost.

Because of regular maintenance, your server may have to be rebooted or taken down occasionally for major updates. What you should expect for this type of downtime is at least 24-48 hours of advanced notice. It is not okay to have downtime and later be told it was planned, when you were never notified. If you are experiencing that type of a response on a regular basis you may want to start looking for another host.

The server software is completely separate than your own scripts installed within your account. While your host is typically responsible for maintaining the server hardware and software, you are ultimately responsible for maintaining your own scripts installed on the server.

Find out about other accounts on the server

Other accounts on a shared server can affect your website. You should ask your host directly what other types of websites are hosted on the same server with you. Typically most hosts will allow adult oriented and other resource intense websites that are small, and move them onto a new package once they have outgrown the shared server. If you do not want to be hosted on servers with certain subjects such as adult or religious websites, you should ask them directly about it to make sure you are not placed on the same server.

Shared servers typically have restrictions on them to insure that the server remains up and so that other users cannot affect your website with their actions. You should ask them about any server resource policies they have in place for e-mailing or cpu/ram usage. These polices are good, as they do protect the server from being overloaded and abused but make sure that there are allowances for times when your account may be highly active or has a burst of traffic.

Questions to ask your new hosting company

Here is a quick list of questions you can ask your new hosting company to get a good idea of how they maintain their servers.

• Do you have a list of current customers websites I can visit?
• Do you have any test ip addresses to test server and network speed?
• What is your current uptime average? Do you have an outside source to verify?
• How many users do you place on your server with X package?
• Do you actively monitor your servers?
• Do you regularly maintain the servers software and hardware?
• Will you send advanced notice for any planned maintenance?
• What type of accounts are placed on the server? Adult, forums, warez, video, others?
• What are your resource usage policies?

Ask questions and find out from previous customers what they experienced and than test the service yourself in order to determine the true server reliability of any hosting company. You will also need to monitor server reliability on a regular basis. It is common for a servers quality to go down over time, so be active in monitoring your server to make sure it is providing you want you paid for.

Previous Articles:

The Insiders Guide to Buying Web Hosting: Customer Service

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