Know your CMS Hosting Company!
The most important things to know about who is hosting your business:

There is no room for error in this regard; you must know and be able to trust your hosting company. Since our content management system (CMS) is a hosted application and does not reside on your own servers, you must know where these servers are, who they are with, and what software is being used. I get questions from time to time about this subject from customers who want to install our products on their own servers. When I tell them this isn't possible, they occasionally express concern. When I dig deeper, I find that the concerns almost always revolve around the issue of trust.

Is my business data being stored in the United States or overseas?
What if your company goes out of business?
What if the servers go down?
Isn't it asking a lot for me to trust your company with my website or my clients' websites?

The questions are valid, and certainly the fly-by-night filled web industry has done much to foster this inherent distrust in our would-be customers. In response, I typically explain that no matter what your situation, you have to trust someone with your website business. Therefore, the real objective is finding a company you can trust.

You have to trust someone.

It doesn't matter if your website is on a hosted CMS, a deployable CMS, an open sourced CMS, or just a static server, you are always putting your trust in someone or something to keep your site running. The question is do you know all of the entities responsible for keeping your site working and do you trust that they will be kept running?

When it's built & hosted by the same company, the buck stops here.

Make sure that the company that you have hired, created and hosts your CMS system. The difference with a hosted CMS solution is that when the company you are hiring is the same company that is building the software and maintaining the servers, you've only got one person to blame. You won't have them blaming the software or hosting company or vice versa. No, with a hosted CMS, the company that built it takes full responsibility for making sure everything is working at all times. So, with a hosted CMS, things are simpler. There's only one question to answer -- do you know and trust the software company?

This is why we (Interlogic Graphics & Marketing, Inc.) have always placed a high emphasis on providing information about our company to our potential customers. We have built our company on a reputation of trust. We are not a startup, we have grown our business organically. We are debt free and we have no outside funding. We started in the web business fourteen years ago (1994) with VoComm in California; ILGM.com came online twelve years ago as a software development company and in 2001 ILGM incorporated in Colorado; that is a fourteen year history! We are proud of the reputation we have built and we put it out there to help inspire the trust that is needed for any relationship to be successful.

So, can you trust a hosted CMS? Of course! But as with any solution, it all depends on who's behind it. Weather you choose ILGM or another company, here are some key points that are must knows before making this important decision.

Choosing a company, building a relationship.

So you have picked a company that looks like they may be able to meet your online needs. Well, lets find out a little more about them; who are they?

Check their Domain Name

Is the registrant owner the same as the website owner?
Do the doing business dates on their site match their domain name?
Do the contacts on their site match the contacts registered?
Do the email domains match the searched domain name? A lot of companies will have a product domain that might be different then the parent company domain name. This is normal, but don't forget to run a search on the parent domain name.
How long is the parent company's domain name registered for? A serious company will have their domain name registered for more then a year or two!

Results for ILGM.com: (Full Report)

Registrant:

Interlogic Graphics & Marketing
5811 Oil Baron Dr
Falcon, Colorado 80831
United States

Registered through: Discounted Websites & Domain Names

Domain Name: ILGM.COM

Created on: 16-Apr-96
Expires on: 16-Apr-18
Last Updated on: 27-Mar-08

Now lets look up a another domain name: (Full Report)

Registrant:

businesscatalyst.com
555 Post Street
San Francisco, CA 94102, US

Registered through: DomainDiscover

Domain Name: BUSINESSCATALYST.COM

Domain created on 13-May-2002
Domain expires on 13-May-2013
Last updated on 18-Jul-2008

The first thing that stands out with this domain is that the domain name (businesscatalyst.com) is the business name. Typically an established company has an actual name? Looking at the full report, I see additional cause for concern: The registrant (DomainDiscover) is an Australian based company. Doesd that mean that the business is also in Australia? Chances are very high that where the domain servers are, is where the data servers are as well. Using the tools at http://www.dnsstuff.com/ we can investigate further and here is what we find:

IP address: 203.134.157.116
Reverse DNS: ns01.businesscatalyst.com.
Reverse DNS authenticity: [Verified]
ASN: 9443
ASN Name: INTERNETPRIMUS-AS-AP (Primus Telecommunications)
IP range connectivity: 3
Registrar (per ASN): APNIC
Country (per IP registrar): AU [Australia]
Country Currency: AUD [Australia Dollars]

So do you want your data stored in Australia or the US? Is security of your data vital to your business? What about international IT law, is your Intellectual Property actually protected?

Can you contact them, how’s their technical support?

Tech support can at times be your lifeline. Know when you can reach someone! You want your hosting company’s tech support to be available 24/7 by both email and by phone:

Is there a 911 that will get someone on the line, now?
Is there even a phone number to contact? (A lot of these companies don't post their phone numbers)
It is also a good idea to check out the company’s support pages/forums. Are they easy to understand?
Do they give good assistance to new users?
Are there a lot of errors or mostly "How to" questions?
How fast are the response times?
How is answering the questions, the professionals you hired, or are the users struggling to find answers?
Live operators are very important as well, do you have access to them are the reps friendly and helpful, or cranky or bored.