Beware of these Red Flags when shopping for Managed Hosting!

By now, you know why managed hosting is a good idea, and you also know what questions to ask of a potential provider.

If you see any of these, move on to another provider.

Poor Communication

A professional managed hosting provider will respond to all requests in a timely manner.

If you don’t receive a reply to your ticket for hours on end, it’s a sign that you should look elsewhere.

This becomes particularly important during the research phase – if they don’t respond to requests that could net them a new customer, how will they respond when you’re a client that’s looking for support?

Mismatched company cultures

A website is an important – and intimate – item, whether you’re a company, an organization or even a sole trader. In our modern age, your website is more important than ever, and you can’t entrust it to just anyone.

That’s why managed web hosts are increasingly seen as business partners, and not merely as vendors.

Buying hosting isn’t as simple as buying groceries at the local market. It has to feel right.

Ask yourself:

• Did you like the people that you talked to at the company? 
• Did the sales staff take time to analyze your needs or did they just offer a generic quote?
• How does the company talk about itself?
• Do their politics, sense of humor and professional demeanor tie in with your own?

A lack of case studies

Always look for case studies and detailed customer success stories. These reveal past successes (or even failures!) and highlight the hardiness of the host’s support staff and engineers.

You can BS a testimonial but not a case study.

If all they have are testimonials – where “Sally from the UK” says that they’re the best company ever – then consider looking elsewhere.

A lack of answers

If the service provider fails to provide clear answers to each of your questions, no matter how insignificant they might seem, then it’s a bad sign for the future.

When you’re paying premium prices for managed hosting, it’s because you want a better quality of service than what’s available from the cheaper commodity providers.

So if your questions are brushed off or ignored, you should find someone else who’ll take the time to answer them.

It seems too cheap to be real

If the quote that you receive is comparable to self-managed hosting, it’s probably too good to be true.

The only way that companies are able to offer such low prices is when they’re cutting costs and cutting corners, or even outsourcing their operations.

In the end, you matter most!

The right managed hosting provider can help you to save time, avoid headaches and ensure efficiency while guaranteeing the security and uptime of your website and your online infrastructure.

The best-managed hosting providers can help you to:

• Monitoring your website and server metrics
• Optimizing your web stack (LAMP, WIMP, LNMP, etc)
• Protect your server from hackers
• Have peace of mind so you can focus on your business

Ultimately, it’s up to you to find a provider who understands your business and has the necessary skills to improve it. By now, you should know exactly what to look for – and what to look out for.

If you’re in the market for a managed hosting provider, be sure to pick up the phone and have a chat to one of our friendly staffers. We’d love to help, even if you choose to work with someone else!