Presales questions and purchasing hosting

31. If you use specific scripts (forums, shopping carts, etc. ) ask if they allow you to use them

Some hosts don't allow certain scripts to be run on their machines so to make sure ask first.

32. Will a shared hosting account be OK for this? (explain what your website is and does, monthly traffic etc)

If the website is already active, tell them how busy the site is. This information, along with the scripts that you use (considering they're known, fairly popular scripts) will allow the host to estimate your usage of resources and thus tell you if your website suits their shared hosting environment or not.

33. Will I have SSH and/or Telnet access?

Many hosts refrain from giving access to such a powerful feature to all customers on shared hosting accounts. SSH is potentially as dangerous as it is useful in the hands of a skillful person.

34. Do you have a site builder that I could use?

If you don't have a website yet, you have no HTML knowledge and you still want to build your website on your own, you will find a site builder to be quite useful. Note that different site builders come with different strengths and weaknesses. Ask for a demo before you buy.

35. Is there a limit on how many emails can be sent per hour?

This is quite important if you have a mailing list of some kind. Many hosts limit this because to limit spam sending and resources abuse.

36. Do I have access to Raw logs? Do you have a traffic analyzer installed?

I talked about this in detail in the "Traffic Analysis" article.

37. What type of payments do you accept?

Accepting credit cards is the norm these days, but for some customers this is not helping. Most hosts will also accept money orders, checks, PayPal etc., but not necessarily list this information on their website. That's why you have to ask each host about the payment method you prefer.

38. Read the TOS and ask about anything that seems strange or you find hard to understand to be explained - or just delete the host off your list

39. How many clients do you have?

Generally I don't consider the number of clients as an important measure of the seriousness of a host. Also one thing to note is that the number of clients is not necessarily equal with the number of websites they host.