The blog ·
Domain names and web hosting: the right questions to ask
A website hangs by two threads: its domain name and its hosting. The day one of these breaks down — a domain you’ve forgotten to renew, a backup that can’t be found, or access held by a former service provider — the whole business disappears from the internet, including your email.
Before entrusting either of these to anyone, here are the questions we recommend you ask. These are the ones most often overlooked when a client calls us following an incident.
The domain name: who does it really belong to?
- In whose name is it registered? The registrant must be your company, not the agency that purchased it or an employee who has since left.
- Who receives renewal notices, and is renewal automatic? An expired domain eventually goes back on sale: it can then be bought by anyone.
- Can you obtain the transfer code at any time? This is what allows you to switch providers without being at their mercy.
- Who manages the DNS? These are the settings that direct your domain to your website and email service; one mistake and emails will stop arriving.
Web hosting: what the package should include
- a security certificate, and automatic redirection of all HTTP addresses to HTTPS;
- backups: how often they’re taken, how long they’re kept, and where they’re stored — somewhere other than on the website’s server;
- restoration: who carries it out, how long it takes, and whether it has been tested;
- server and content management system updates, monitoring and support;
- email and mailboxes;
- your access rights: admin panel, secure file transfer, database.
This list is not exhaustive, but if an offer remains unclear on any of these points, it warrants further enquiry.
If your website sells products online
You are responsible for your customers’ data. Also check:
- that backups can actually be restored: a backup you’ve never checked is nothing more than a hope;
- compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS): the simplest approach is to entrust card details processing to a certified payment service provider, rather than routing them through your server;
- the quality of your HTTPS configuration, which you can test for free using Qualys’ SSL Labs.
Our answers to these questions
- We purchase and manage your domain names on behalf of your company, and we handle their renewal.
- Your websites are hosted on servers that we administer ourselves, leased from OVHcloud, our long-standing partner; where your data is stored and which laws it is subject to is explained on our hosting and data sovereignty page.
- A Let’s Encrypt security certificate is provided free of charge for every hosted website and is renewed automatically.
- We handle backups, maintenance and your email service, and we regularly test our server configurations using SSL Labs.
- Our procedures are audited internally.
To find out more: our guide to web hosting for SMEs, and our blog post on digital sovereignty.