1. What Is Your Real Uptime Rate? (Not SLA — Actual Data)
| Uptime | Monthly Downtime |
|---|---|
| 99% | 7 hours |
| 99.5% | 3 hours |
| 99.9% | 43 min |
| 99.99% | 4 min |
Target: Minimum 99.95% uptime
2. What Is Your Average TTFB in ms?
| TTFB | Assessment |
|---|---|
| <150 ms | Excellent |
| 150–300 ms | Good |
| 300–500 ms | Average |
| 500+ ms | Poor |
3. How Many Minutes Does It Take to Reach Your Support Team?
| Support Response Time | Impact |
|---|---|
| 5–15 min | Excellent |
| 30–60 min | Average |
| 2–6 hours | Poor |
| 24 hours | Very poor |
4. Do You Take Daily Backups?
Questions to ask:
- Is daily backup available?
- How many days are backups retained?
- Is one-click restore available?
- Is it paid or free?
5. Is Site Migration Free? Who Handles It?
- Do you handle the migration yourself?
- Will there be any downtime?
- Is a staging environment available?
- Is a DNS transition plan provided?
6. What Server Technology Do You Use?
| Technology | Impact |
|---|---|
| LiteSpeed | Very fast |
| Nginx | Fast |
| Apache | Average |
| NVMe Disk | Very fast |
| SSD | Fast |
7. Are Resources Shared or Isolated?
- Is CPU shared?
- Is RAM guaranteed?
- Is there an I/O limit?
- Is there an entry process limit?
8. What Happens During a Traffic Spike?
- Is autoscaling available?
- Does the site go down if the limit is exceeded?
- Are additional resources added automatically?
9. What Security Measures Are in Place?
Minimum requirements:
- WAF
- Malware scan
- DDoS protection
- Imunify360 / equivalent
- Free SSL
10. How Is Hosting Upgraded?
- Is upgrade available without downtime?
- How many minutes does the transition take?
- Is data migration required?
Hosting Comparison Framework
Use the table below as a checklist: score each provider you evaluate against the target in the "Ideal Value" column. If a criterion falls below the target, that is a red flag for that provider.
| Criterion | Ideal Value | Unacceptable |
|---|---|---|
| Uptime | 99.95% or above (actual data) | Below 99.9% or SLA promise only |
| TTFB | Below 150 ms | Above 500 ms |
| Support | Response in 5–15 min, 24/7 | Response time longer than 2 hours |
| Backup | Daily, free, one-click restore | No backup or paid restore |
| Migration | Free, zero downtime, handled by the team | You handle it yourself, downtime involved |
| CPU/RAM | Isolated / guaranteed resources | Fully shared, no guarantee |
| Security | WAF + malware scan + DDoS + free SSL | SSL only or nothing |
| Price | Transparent renewal pricing, fixed | Low entry + high renewal price shock |
Migration Risk Table
| Risk | Reason |
|---|---|
| Downtime | DNS transition |
| Data loss | Missing backup |
| SEO decline | Site offline |
| Mail loss | MX records |
| Incompatibility | PHP version |