Here are some important questions to ask your potential ISP as well as things to consider:

• Business References. Call several references and ask them about the service they received, how long they have been a client and their opinion of the ISP.
  
  
• Bandwidth. "Bigger is not always Better". Ask your ISP what last month's bandwidth usage was as a percentage of their total. Any ISP using more than seventy percent on average could present severe problems for you during peak hours. Likewise, ISP's with low percentages who are more costly are likely charging you for the excess bandwidth they bought and didn't need.
  
  
• History. How long as the ISP been in business ? How many domains are hosted by the ISP ? What percentage of the ISP's customers have been online for more than two years ? While some of these questions may seem like prying questions - they are important to you in making your decision because longevity with a number of clients supports loyalty and means a satisfied consumer.
  
  
• Uptime. Ask the ISP what percentage of time ALL of their equipment was accessible on the Internet for the prior year. Obviously, equipment fails and equipment gets upgraded. There are acceptable periods of "downtime" which is expected in order to maintain servers, upgrade software and keep up with future technology. We suggest that any ISP with less than 99% uptime be scrutinized closely. With proper equipment and planned maintenance and upgrades, you should expect at least 99% uptime for any year.
  
  
• Backup. Does the ISP backup your data frequently ? It is expected that web designers have current copies of your web site on their systems. However, more complex sites which contain dynamic databases such as products, prices, sales, etc., are the responsibility of the ISP to backup and maintain. Make sure the ISP performs frequent file backups of your data.
  
  
• Failure Plan. The Internet is reliant on many, many factors and cooperation between ISP's to work. It is likely the only industry where competitors must mutually agree to serve each other for the Internet to work. Your ISP must have at least one "alternate" route to the Internet in the event their primary route fails. ISP's who purchase services from another ISP should be critiqued more heavily because they are likely reliant on that ISP for their service. This is the classic "multi-level-marketing" approach, where an ISP simply uses the facilities of yet another ISP to conduct business. ISP's in this situation are completely subjected to the decisions of their "upline" and are not in total control of their connectivity. In addition to alternate Internet routes, your ISP should also have battery backup (UPS) on all their equipment and gas or diesel generators capable of running for days without the need for traditional electric service. Also ask the ISP about "backup" servers. What happens in the event the server your site is hosted on fails ? Are you out of business for hours or days ? The reality is that equipment will fail, electric will fail; but a good ISP will have a backup system in place which can be implemented quickly to guarantee you the quality of service you deserve.
  
  
• Monitoring and Security. Make sure your ISP monitors their network and those of their national backbone providers 24 hours, seven days per week and respond to any outages immediately. Make sure your ISP has a good "firewall", or security monitoring system, to ensure that the service you receive will not be subjected to known, intentional tampering and abuse.
  
  
• Services. Once you decide on what your web site requires make sure your ISP offers the necessary services you will need and if there are any additional charges make sure you are aware of them. Most ISP's will charge extra, as an example, for secure (SSL) transactions, database access, etc. If you have employed a web design firm to write your online store make sure they are involved in the question and answer phase with the potential ISP before you sign a contract or write a check.
  
  
• Support. What days and hours of support can you expect from the ISP ? Minimally, the ISP should offer routine technical support during normal business hours Monday through Friday. All ISP's should have provisions for handling critical outage calls after normal business hours and on weekends - essentially 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In the technological world we live in today, most ISP's will use voice-mail or other electronic means for their clients to leave messages when their staff is busy or after normal support hours. While this practice is acceptable to most, make sure your ISP will return your phone call promptly and that your questions are answered.
  
  
• Dedicated Connections. If you are looking for a permanent, dedicated connection to the Internet for providing access to your employees, there are additional considerations:
  • Bandwidth. Make sure your ISP will guarantee you the bandwidth of that office connection if it is a guaranteed agreement.
  • Security. Make certain your ISP offers Firewall protection to keep hackers or intruders out of your internal network.
  • Control. Your ISP should be able to manage or install at your location any software that will control what Internet services you decide your employees can and cannot use. Other software which can monitor your employee usage for management purposes should also be available.