Hi, I am interested to know what people look for in a hosting company before registering or transferring services to the new hosting provider. Looking to only hear 5 top things, go!
- Location
- Stability
- Time in Business
- Hardware
- Price
- Debian
- Dollars
2 Likes
Reliability - it has to be a well known established and trustworthy provider
Uptime - it has to have a good uptime record
Performance - it has to offer good network and specs
Pricing - it has to offer a good price per quality ratio
Support - decent support when it comes to hardware and network
4 Likes
Phone support, ideally local. Or at least live chat.
There’s a million different hosting services out there. Good support goes a long way in differentiating one company from all the other cookie-cutter summer hosts.
1 Like
At least here: fire & forget solutions, no matter if it’s a little more expensive. Domain registration, mail hosting, web hosting, security patches & hardening, speed: most people don’t want to know anything about all this stuff. They want the most expedite solution to give you money and obtain crystal-clear, ELI5 ELI3 instructions to configure their mail client and upload pictures of their cat, or their CEO. They want to find the site online, receive mail, and configure stuff easily. Free migration, if needed. Phone support option, just in case.
1 Like
Snapshot/Backup - It will be cool if the provider have “one click restore” on their panel.
Reliability - As long as they are not doctor
Pricing - Yearly payment for idling and hourly base for actual use.
Emotion - Some how Scaleway is my first host…and I kinda love them.
Location - It seems like I need 5 things
1 - Look for Miguel;
2 - Buy it.
2 Likes
- Not being in GDPR zone and/or the E.U.
- Being in the best location for my target audience (cloud networks win for this reason).
- Owning their own datacenters and not installing software you don’t want (again, cloud servers…).
- Offering cloud servers. There, I said it again.
- Price and reliability and good AUP.
1 Like
Out of curiosity, why?
GDPR is a nightmare IMO… telling companies how to run their business and forcing them to “delete” massive amounts of data potentially, even if they are a small operation with few tools. And the laws also support censorship, allowing requests to take down content that mentions names or etc… it just gets worse and worse every year and thank the gods that the UK left the E.U. otherwise no datacenters.
1 Like
I honestly think phone support is critical! That’s why I’m thinking of providing international numbers for our clients.
1 Like
You don’t even have to be based in the EU in order to require some level of GDPR compliance though… Even if you’re based in the USA or another non-EU country, if you offer goods or services (even free services) to EU residents, you still need to be GDPR-compliant for those residents (Art. 3 GDPR – Territorial scope - General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)). The only way to avoid requiring GDPR compliance is by not serving European customers.
GDPR is really good for customers but it’s definitely a lot of work for companies to properly implement. There’s something similar in California now (CCPA) and I wouldn’t be surprised if the entire US adopts something similar.
This is a good one I forgot to mention. Owning their own AS, IP range, and hardware rather than renting from the cheapest dedi provider they could find 
2 Likes
Yah fuck that. Tell the stoogey French bureaucrats to sue my American small business, the courts will laugh them right out of the courtroom and back to Brussels.
Almost no company is “properly” following all the crazy amount of GDPR rules anyways, so its all just for show really unless your a major corporation that the seedy EU lawyers are trying to sue for millions of dollars just to scam them out of their money. The US will absolutely never have something similar, it is about as anti-American as you get to tell small businesses what content they can maintain.
Oddly enough your way of buying hosting services is the same as mine for ladies of the night.
4 Likes
Why though ? as a small provider I believe its better to rely on a specific datacenters for latest hardware generation, good network optimization, good routing and peering, etc…
I mean you don’t expect one provider to be perfect in everything from their support to hardware to routing and peering and the list can go on. (godlike provider)
For example I focus on supporting my client with everything from setting their OS to logging into their domain panel and pointing their domain to server IP. (very specific niche I know) I won’t be able to do that without relying on renting dedis from specific datacenters and this apply to a lot of other providers here.
Not having your own DC doesn’t mean you are bad and having your own DC doesn’t mean you are good. I’ve dealt with people who had their own DC (that I’m not gonna name) and didn’t follow best rfcs in their routing policies, IP assignment, etc… !!
The godlike providers you are talking about costs a lot of $$$ to operate and those costs are usually passed over to their clients .
1 Like
You could possibly use an iNum for a support #. I have one but they are pretty long.
Definitely 
Not sure that technically true, if your company operateing outside the European Union with no entity or infrastructure operating in the EU, there nothing the EU could if your non-compliant since GDPR is EU law not enforceable outside EU.
1 Like
Sure, I’m willing to pay more for a better quality service though. The main VPS providers I use own their equipment and IP ranges. I think it just shows that they’re more likely to survive compared to some kid that started renting one server from OVH or Hetzner and decided to start a hosting service on it. If a host is just renting their equipment, they’d need to do something else to differentiate themselves from all the other hosts that are doing exactly the same thing.
Yeah that’s definitely tricky and I’m not sure whether there’s any caselaw for it yet.
From what I’ve seen, they try pretty hard to enforce GDPR
There are several mechanisms through which the GDPR can be enforced in the US.
- If the company has a presence or assets (e.g., bank accounts, real estate, servers) in the EU/EEA , they can be seized for GDPR noncompliance.
- For companies without a physical presence in the EU/EEA, the GDPR mandates the appointment of a representative who is physically located within the EU/EEA . In cases of GDPR noncompliance, this representative would be a likely channel through which fines are levied.
- International law is another potential channel through which legal action can be taken. Given that it is mutually beneficial for national enforcement agencies to support each other, punitive actions may be pursued by the EU/EEA enforcement agencies. These agencies are likely to be assisted by public agencies in the country where the company is registered.
The thing I’m not sure about is how the GDPR can mandate that you have a representative in the EU. Not sure they’d be able to enforce that for non-EU companies…
- Longevity: Going to be around for years to come.
- Reliability: Uptime, works solidly.
- Low price: Cost effective, worth the money.
- Usable interface: Both for managing the hosting and contacting support/billing.
- Responsive: The rare occasions that I contact them about an issue, there should be an adequate and prompt response.
2 Likes