Inspired by a private message 'conversation' recently, I am interested what anybody else thinks about this:

If you were looking for a web host today, what would be your top 3 questions?

Hi JdS,

I would personally ask these three questions because IMO, reliability and speed are more important than any other factors. Of course, cost is the most important, but that's a different issue.

1. How long have you been around?
2. How much downtime have you had in the past year?
3. What bandwidth provider and server do you use?

I would ask

1. How much downtime in the past year
2. Does your server support Scripting (CGI, Perl, PHP, etc)
3. How much server space and bandwidth at what cost.

I think that would be the top three question for me.

On this I am presuming that a half-decent host would at least show off what they provide. If they don't then I'm concerned that they don't know what they are doing.

1) How much is extra bandwidth and space going to cost if I go over allocation
2) Downtime details I suppose
3) Are you willing to regularly upgrade the servers in performance and features to maintain a worthy service.

This is a quick addition and 4th in the list (even though you were asking for 3). This would be, will you allow me access to my log files. I say this because I want to use my own logging program rather than webalizer or analog that comes with my hosts cPanel and they are being funny about letting me know the unix route because of security problems.

Article on Questions to ask your potential host
http://www.internet-magazine.com/hosting/questions1.asp

Some things you may not have thought of yet.

I would tell them to follow this link http://www.dnsreport.com/tools/dnsreport.ch?domain=myhost.com
Where myhost.com is the hosting company link. And ask them to respond to the WARN/FAIL if there are any.

See what they have to say.

I think one of the biggest mistakes and misconceptions is when a customer asks how many domains are on a server. It is more appropriate to ask what is the load average on the server and whether it fluctuates or stays constant.

That's a good point Ronny. I wouldn't want to be hosted on a server with 10 really busy forums but wouldn't mind one with 100 static websites.

Something I just think of..

Asking if they can give contacts (if allowed by client)
so that you can talk with poeple already at that host.
Example:
if I want hosting at X I would ask for a contact.
A user on X allows it and we talk about some things.
If that user is happy with his hosting it will be a quite good average about there services, from real users on X