Anyone can list RAM and cores. These are the questions whose answers actually differ between providers — and where a vague answer tells you as much as a clear one.
On failure
- How would I find out my site is down — from you, or from a customer? If there is no answer involving a monitor and an alert, nobody is watching.
- What is your response time, and does it differ at 2am on a Sunday? "We aim to respond quickly" is not a commitment.
- When did you last restore a backup to check it works? Backups that have never been restored are a hypothesis, not a safety net.
On the boring things that break
- Who renews the SSL certificates, and how do you know it worked? The second half matters more than the first.
- Who renews the domain? A lapsed registration takes a business offline more completely than a failed server.
- How often do you patch the operating system? "Automatically" is a good answer. Silence is not.
On access and exit
- Can my team change a DNS record without raising a ticket? If everything routes through support, expect delays whenever they are busy.
- If I leave, what do I take with me and how long does it take? A provider confident in their service answers this immediately.
- Who else can see my data? On shared infrastructure, ask specifically how tenants are separated.
On the bill
- What is not included? The interesting number is the second invoice, not the first.
- What happens if I outgrow this plan — do you tell me, or does the bill?
How to read the answers
You are not looking for perfect answers. A provider who says "we do not do that, here is what we do instead" is more trustworthy than one who says yes to everything.
What should worry you is vagueness on the specifics — response times, restore testing, exit terms. Those are either defined or they are not, and a provider who has defined them will tell you the number.