No, not all hosting companies are the same. There is more than just a price difference that you should consider. This document will explain in what ways PZ Internet is a better choice for your business, instead of the average hosting company. Voice Mail / Wait Queues Try calling your prospective web hosting company's technical support department. Do you get through right away, or do you wait in a hold-queue for several minutes? PZ: Our support team is readily available without any hold-queues. Tiered Support How many support tiers are there at the prospective company? Quite often support departments have a 1st Level "General" support tier, which only answers basic questions. They then have a 2nd Level "Advanced" support tier, that can answer intermediate questions. Finally, they have a 3rd Level "Engineering" support tier that can answer very technical questions. Quite often when needing support, customers may find themselves playing phone tag and 20-questions with 1st Level / 2nd Level support representatives. It isn't until the problem has continued for 4 or 5 days that finally it gets escalated to the 3rd Level engineers. PZ: Our support team is run by 3rd Level support representatives ONLY. When you contact them with technical questions, you will get immediate answers. Network Redundancy It sounds like a technical term, but it is vitally important to understand how your web host's network is structured. Do they have failover peers should their primary internet connection go down? Many will talk about how they have T1's or OC3's - but by how many different providers? What happens when your web host's bandwidth provider goes down? Do they already have live connections to a completely different provider? PZ: We peer with multiple bandwidth providers. If one goes down, we have another ready and waiting. You can view our impressive network structure at http://www.pzinternet.com/network.gif Years in Business Industry experience is very important. When problems arise, experience will determine whether or not the problem gets fixed quickly and easily. PZ: We've been offering reliable hosting services since May 1998 Software Solutions Did the company make their own control panel, or do they license it from some other company? The same question asked another way would be: "If there was a problem with your control panel, would you contact the software publisher/author of the control panel?" PZ: We built our own control panel. If any problems arise, our engineering staff can fix them immediately. We do not rely on 3rd party companies which could cause extra delays in getting a problem fixed. Revenue streams How many different services does the prospective hosting company offer? As we know, the cliche is "Jack of all trades, master of none." - Be very wary of a hosting company that also sells Internet access, or other services unrelated to web hosting. Quite often these other companies are spreading their technical staff too thin, having them work on many different services and not just web hosting. Hosting your website with a provider that specializes in web hosting is important. The difference is comparable to eating pasta at a cafeteria or family restaurant that serves "everything", or visiting an authentic Italian restaurant. PZ: We specialize in web hosting. It is our primary business focus. Our attention is on keeping your website running at all times. Price Structure There are companies that sell services at a loss, in order to attract new business. The problem with this method, is that they either raise the prices dramatically a year later, or they end up selling their customer base to another company to recover lost profit. PZ: Our prices are set to keep us in business for the long term. We'll be here now, and in the future. We've built a strong foundation. If you'd like our staff to explain to you the benefits of hosting with PZ over a specific company, please give us the details of the prospective company you are considering. We'll do a cost and feature evaluation to show you the differences. Simply send email to sales@pzinternet.com or call 1-800-820-7333 and we'll be happy to help.