One of my highly esteemed clients is a small nonprofit organization that is persevering in the hard task of bringing its web site to a whole new level.

The staff has worked really hard to understand and articulate what their stakeholders need.  They considered many different proposals from web developers, narrowed the field to a small number of superlative candidates, and made a choice.  I was their advocate and adviser, but they drove the process and made the choice. Their process of choosing a web developer was a textbook case of due diligence in technical decision-making for non-technical managers.  My buddy Kathleen Sherwin of TechFoundation, who teaches a workshop on this topic, would be proud of them. 

And now they are trying to choose a new web and email host, and the results they are getting make me ashamed of the state of the internet services industry.  It should not be an agonizing and lengthy process to find a hosting service that is a good match for their technical specifications, budgetary constraints, and organizational culture.

Several weeks ago, we narrowed it down to a field of candidates that all looked good on paper.  All but one declined to provide us with references.  Host A (as we shall call it) had three extraordinarily glowing references, but was reported by the state attorney general's office to be in arrears on a chunk of money owed to the state.  Host B was reported by the web developer, who was using it for another client's new site, to have multiple outages.  Host C, which had a very reasonable base rate, wanted to charge my client an exorbitant monthly fee when we explained that we need more memory than was provided in the standard package.  Host D did not return phone calls within a week, and took about the same amount of time to respond to email queries.  Host E had been given a very bad rating by the Better Business Bureau.  Host F was the topic of an independent web site devoted entirely to horror stories about its services.

The good folks at Despair, Inc. have a demotivation poster that says, "Mediocrity:  it takes a lot less time and most people won't notice the difference until it's too late."  In this case, a rigorous search for an email and web host has led us to notice the difference before we commit ourselves.  We have now identified yet another candidate, Host G, that looks like a keeper.  I'm not sure which would be more appalling at this point:  to find out that Host G has a fatal flaw before my client signs on the dotted line, or to find it out a month after we've done the implementation. It breaks my heart to tell my esteemed client that the best we can hope for is to find the least mediocre option and live with it. 




Clarification:

Since I posted this item, several colleagues have asked me what the specifications are for this nonprofit organization's hosting service.  The web site is being developed on a LAMP platform, and we've come up with eight deal-breakers:
Developer has root access

Apache Cocoon is installed or can be installed

Apache HTTPS (Web) server version

Minimum of 1 gig storage

Minimum of 50 monthly bandwidth

Minimum of 128 memory allocation for authoring

Minimum of 256 memory allocation for delivery

Monthly cost under $45.00 USD
Another high-priority is more qualitative:  this is an organization with a staff that needs to speak to human beings when there's a problem.  They need questions answered and problems resolved while they wait on the phone, or at most on the same day.  If you know of the right hosting service for them (or if you are the right hosting service for them), please don't hesitate to be in touch with me.