Choosing a partner – the most important thing to consider…
When choosing a hosting partner, what is the most important thing to consider? Price? Feature? Disk Space? Bandwidth? I’d say it’s none of these… the single most important feature you need to consider is partner themselves. You should be asking: Are they open with their customers? Do they treat their customers like numbers, or partners? Are they honest? Most importantly… Is this a company you are going to want to stay connected to for the long term?
All the other questions, bandwidth, price, features, etc. are details that can be addressed. None of them should factor into a decision to partner with them or not, provided none of them are out of line. But then if they are out of line with industry norms, they’re probably not going to measure up well with the other questions anyway.
Things to look for include checking that they have (and update) a customer news/announcements site or forum. You should also ask the support crew a question or two before signing up. It doesn’t have to anything special or even difficult. What you are looking for is a timely, courteous and accurate answer. One of my early customers asked a question he already knew the answer to… JUST to see if we’d be straightfoward in the answer. And they’re still a customer today.
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About: Robert: Robert Porter holds MCSE, A+, Net+, Security+, and multiple CIW certifications. He has been in the hosting industry for more than a decade and is founder of Lagniappe Internet L.L.C., a privately owned, completely debt free, hosting company based out of New Orleans. Robert's background includes 25+ years in programming, databases, networking and systems administration. |
