“Definitely make sure the provider has some way of letting their customers contact them in off-hours in cases of emergency.”One of the most important decisions in the beginning of an adult webmaster’s business is his choice of Web Service Providers. Many times, the webmaster will signup with the least expensive provider only to go through a transfer to another provider down the line. There are many things to look for when choosing a Web Service Provider — reliability, support, cost, and features. I would consider those four, in that order, to be the most important things to consider when choosing a provider.

Reliability and speed is the most important thing (by far) to find out about when considering a provider. Simply put, a provider can offer php3, free consulting, web-based upload, unlimited emails, unlimited domains, perl, mysql, free content, strip club passes, and free blowjobs, but that won’t matter at all if your site goes down all the time. If a web site is down or bogged down, the site gets fewer hits. If the site gets fewer hits, there are fewer signups, clickthroughs, etc. First find out what Operating System the provider is running. If it is Windows NT, I would suggest to keep looking. Windows NT will slow down much quicker than a Unix system. The only reason to look into being hosted on a Windows NT server is for Active Server Pages and other NT-only features. I would suggest that you build your site so that it does not need any NT software. Find a Unix server, if your business grows large, you will benefit by starting out on the right software.

When considering a particular provider, never listen to what the provider says about their uptime. Some providers boast \’\’.\’\’5% uptime. In most cases, that is far from the truth, especially when averaging over all the servers. After doing the math on that, it comes to less than 4 minutes down in a month. Even the best-constructed server farm will have something go down that lasts longer than that, there are simply too many variables. When looking at provider claims, pay attention to whether or not they guarantee their claim with rebates. A provider that guarantees even a \’\’% uptime will be a good choice (\’\’% is less than 8 hours down in a month).

“Definitely make sure the provider has some way of letting their customers contact them in off-hours in cases of emergency.”

Ask the provider for references, but you shouldn’t give those references too much attention. If you can find sites on your own that are hosted on the provider, they would probably give a more truthful description of the provider’s services.