Silberman's former hosts, he says, promised reliability and performance they couldn't deliver. Third-party hosts provide space on a server, usually shared with other companies, as well as a speedy Internet connection and technical support. Picking a host is tricky. Thousands of services charge countless fees, make all sorts of promises and raise seemingly endless questions. To help choose one that'll get the job done, here are key questions to ask, answers to insist on and information on how to get them.
Surveys show reliability is e-businesses' main concern.
Look for at least a 95 percent uptime guarantee, and find out what that guarantee means, advises Jon Landry, sales manager with TopHosts. Com, a Web-host rating service and directory in Toronto. An ideal host has one or more T3 lines connected directly to the Internet, not through someone else's network operations center, says Landry. Servers should be fast Pentium Pros or Sun SparcStations, running Windows NT, Linux or another mainstream, high-performance operating system. Let your host know if you use bandwidth-gobbling features like streaming audio and video.