As a developer of web applications and websites, I often have to deal with (and sometimes, live with) the hosting service providers my clients choose. Some select one with the most “features”. Others choose one that is the cheapest.

Unfortunately, most “features” are little more than meaningless text that can fill up a lot of whitespace on the provider’s website. Here are a few examples of “features” that you should take with a grain of salt.

Uptime Guarantee
I have yet to come across web hosting company that “guarantees” less than 99.98% uptime. (I have even seen figures like 99.9993%!) God alone knows how they come up with those figures. 99.98% uptime translates into a down time of 17.28 seconds a day or 8.64 minutes a month. I have no good reason to believe that any hosting service that is not load balanced, and costs $4.95 a month – give or take a few dollars – will be down only 8.64 minutes a month on an average. Think of all the patches that have to be applied and the reboots that must be done for various reasons, not to mention hardware malfunction.

And what if your server is down for more than 17.28 seconds per day? The fine print usually states that you must provide a detailed record of when your server was down and for how long. If the down time exceeds the service level guarantee, you are usually promised a one-month credit. I am sure you can see the problems with this scheme. First, you will spend many hours recording the outages and claiming your refund. Second, even if you are successful, your trouble is worth only $4.95. Third, all that this exercise buys you is one more month of lousy service.

These days, any self-respecting hosting service is expected to a reasonable uptime. There is no reason to believe that 99.9998% uptime is any better than 99% uptime.

Award Winning Service
Which awards has the service won, who gives the awards, what are the criteria for the award, and which other services did this one beat out to the victory podium are the little details that are seldom mentioned. The phrase is good for writing eye-catching ads, but little else.

24×7 Support
Like 99.98% uptime, all services seem to have 24×7 support. What they usually fail to mention are the channels used for support. On closer scrutiny, you will find that a great many of the services provide 24×7 e-mail support. Now, 24×7 e-mail support is an oxymoron, if you ask me. You basically have to shoot off an e-mail and twiddle your thumbs until a reply arrives. The only thing you can do 24×7 is ask for support; the help arrives whenever the tech support guy gets around to providing it. More often than not, the reply is tangential, which does not solve your problem but does raise your blood pressure. In my book, 24×7 support means instant support whenever you need it. An e-mail mailbox does not count.

To be fair, not every support issue needs instant attention. But there are times when urgent issues are best addressed by talking to a person. To qualify for 24×7 support, a hosting service must have a support phone number — preferably a toll-free one. A 24×7 live chat at the very least. Otherwise, it is more like once-in-24-hours support.

500 E-mail Accounts
I don’t know of a small business that needs five hundred e-mail accounts. The hosting service is well aware of the fact too. The only purpose of the offer is to attract people who are easily impressed by big numbers.

Super-fast Servers with Intel/AMD Processors
Most servers out there have Intel/AMD processors, and super-fast is, after all, a relative term. This phrase does not tell you anything about the server your site is going to end up on.

50+ Ready-to-use Applications: Blog, Chat, CMS, You-name-it
One of my clients had signed up for a hosting service that made similar claims. The claims were not false — at least not completely. The account did have 50+ applications. The trouble was that they were not installed! Tech support advised him that he could install any of them himself via an online control panel. They only provided the applications. They did not support them.

Geeks can live with this scheme of things, but for everyone else the applications are practically useless.

FREE!
If you see this word more than a couple of times in the hosting features, you should immediately see a red flag. Another of my clients had a hosting service that cost $3.95 a month and came with a free blog and one free SQL Server database, among many other free features. It turned out that the “free” blog was ad-supported and carried a banner at the top. The cost of getting the banner off was another $3.95 a month. The free SQL Server database had a limit of 10 Megabytes — which is just about the space required for an empty database.

So much for “features”! You are likely to be disappointed if they are your only criteria in choosing your provider.

If, on the other hand, you happen to select a hosting service provider solely on the basis of cost, you are likely to be equally disappointed. Hosting is a cut-throat business. Yet, unless it is a charitable organization, the hosting service provider has to make a profit to remain in business. Rock bottom prices and profit don’t go hand-in-hand. More often than not, very low prices translate to a low quality service. The low prices may even imply a last ditch attempt at survival. History tells us that most super-low-cost hosting providers are gobbled up by bigger rivals or simply go out of business.

So, how should go about choosing a hosting service? That’s a difficult question to answer. But here is a formula that has worked for me in choosing good hosting services:

1. Do your preliminary research on hosting providers and make a shortlist based on the platform and the software your site needs.


2. Scratch off services that don’t have phone support during business hours at the very least.


3. If the service offers support by live chat, try chatting with a support technician. Unless you are asking an account specific question, you don’t usually have to give them account details. Scratch off services you are unhappy with.


4. Call up the toll-free sales number (they all have them!) and get a clarification of each of the “features”. This is the time to find out, for example, that the 50+ applications are not actually installed and supported. Scratch off services you are unhappy with.


5. By now, your shortlist should be much shorter. Arrange the providers in ascending order of the cost and choose the one in the middle, unless you have a good reason to select another one based on your conversations.


6. Set up an account for one month and install your site. You don’t have to transfer your domain yet. You can test the site with just an IP address or a temporary URL.


7. During the month call for tech support, send support e-mails, check in the middle of the night whether your site is up, check throughout the day if it is slow, or test whichever other feature that is important to you.


8. If you are happy, move your domain.

You may think this is a lot of work for something as simple as signing up for hosting. Believe me it is not. Once you commit to a hosting service, it is a hassle to move a working website — especially if it uses databases — and e-mail accounts if you are not happy with it. A little legwork upfront can go a long way in ensuring a trouble-free online presence.