Because hosting plays an essential role in your website’s security, performance, and reliability, choosing a hosting provider isn’t something that you want to leave up to chance
Beyond that, hosting can also play a role in regulatory compliance, including helping you comply with regulatory requirements and guidelines such as GDPR, CCPA, SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and many industry-specific considerations.
Because there are so many different aspects that go into evaluating a hosting provider, performing a more systematized hosting vendor audit can help you be confident that you’re making the right choice for your organization.
In this post, we’ll take you through how to conduct a hosting vendor audit to ensure security and compliance while also covering other important areas, such as support, uptime, and performance, as well as common pitfalls and red flags to watch out for.
Key areas to assess in a hosting vendor audit
To kick things off, let’s start with a high-level look at some of the important areas you’ll want to assess in a hosting vendor audit.
While there are a lot of specific questions you should ask of a vendor in an audit, you’ll generally want to focus on the following five areas:
- Security. Assess the general security of the hosting vendor’s infrastructure, including certifications, encryption, firewalls, DDoS protection, backups, etc. You’ll also want to consider how the vendor’s security features can align with your organization’s internal policies.
- Compliance. Consider whether the vendor can help you achieve compliance with important regulations and frameworks, including GDPR, SOC 2, HIPAA, and any industry-specific compliance requirements.
- Performance and reliability. Look into data center locations, scalability, uptime guarantees, service-level agreements, and other details about a vendor’s performance and reliability.
- Support and transparency. Consider the support channels available to you, support hours, response times (average response times and service-level agreement-backed minimum response times), contract clarity, etc.
- Costs and contracts. Go beyond top-level pricing and consider other details such as hidden fees (overage fees, add-ons, etc.), contract flexibility, and exit clauses.
Below, we’ll cover how to assess these key areas by looking at the following areas:
- Security and compliance
- Service-level agreements for uptime, performance, and support
- Your own organization’s policies and how to align them with a vendor
- Red flags and potential pitfalls, including hidden costs
- Some general tips on putting it all together to audit hosting vendors
For each section, we’ll also include a checklist of essential questions to answer for each hosting vendor in your audit.
Security and compliance: What to look for
Security and compliance should be among the most important areas in a vendor audit because any issues could seriously affect your business and customer relationships.
When evaluating a hosting provider’s security posture, look for industry-recognized certifications like SOC 2 and ISO 27001, proactive measures such as firewalls, enterprise-level DDoS protection, and automated backups. Some providers, like Kinsta, also offer an isolated container-based infrastructure that enhances security and performance.
You can use this website security checklist to dig into essential security functionality in more detail.
You can also research whether a company has experienced any security issues in the past. If there was a security issue, you should consider how the company responded and what policies they’ve put in place to prevent similar problems in the future.
Question checklist for security and compliance
- Security infrastructure. Does the host offer essential security infrastructure such as encryption, firewalls, DDoS protection, backups, etc.?
- General security certifications. What security certifications does the provider have? Do they comply with industry-standard certifications or attestations such as SOC 2 and ISO 27001?
- Privacy regulations. Can the host help you comply with privacy regulations such as GDPR, CCPA, etc.?
- Industry-specific compliance requirements. If your industry has its own special requirements, can the vendor meet those requirements?
- Ongoing compliance. What policies does the vendor have to ensure ongoing compliance with regulations?
- Proactive security protections. What policies and practices does the vendor have to address zero-day exploits and other future threats?
- Security breach policy. What happens if there is a security incident? What specific protocols does the vendor have in place to address issues and notify customers?
Understanding service-level agreements (SLAs) and performance guarantees
Most quality web hosting providers will offer at least some guarantees when it comes to uptime, performance, and support. However, there can be a lot of differences in what those guarantees are and how closely they’re followed.
Here are some areas to focus on when auditing a vendor’s guarantees:
- Service-level agreement (SLA). A “guarantee” doesn’t mean very much if there aren’t specific requirements and remedies in place to back up that guarantee. In the hosting space, an SLA is an agreement between you and the vendor that defines the specific responsibilities, metrics, and remedies. If a vendor doesn’t offer clear, transparent SLAs, that can be a red flag.
- Uptime guarantees. Looking for “99.9% uptime” in the marketing copy isn’t enough when it comes to uptime. It’s also important to understand what the uptime guarantee applies to, how “uptime” is calculated, what remedies there are if that guarantee isn’t met, etc.
- Performance under scale. It’s important to understand how a host’s performance claims work under scale, along with how the host responds to traffic spikes. Does the host offer some type of automatic scaling, or will your site slow down or become unresponsive if there’s a large traffic spike?
- Hidden limitations. You’ll want to check for any notable limitations that might not be immediately apparent. For example, performance throttling, large overage fees, unexpected downtime (e.g., if the host doesn’t scale), etc.
- Support responsiveness. Beyond 24/7 support availability (a must), you should also look into what average support times are and whether those response times are guaranteed by an SLA. If there are multiple support tiers, you’ll also want to understand how the actual response times change between tiers.
Overall, look for providers that offer transparent SLAs with clear uptime guarantees and proactive incident response. A strong hosting provider will also ensure real-time monitoring, automatic scaling, and a global network to reduce latency—features that platforms like Kinsta prioritize.
To give you an idea of what an SLA should look like, here’s an example of Kinsta’s SLA-backed guarantees for 99.9% uptime and 99.99% uptime, both of which include specific remedies for various situations.
Question checklist for SLAs and performance guarantees
- Uptime and performance guarantees. What are the specific guarantees when it comes to uptime and performance?
- 99.9% versus 99.99%. What level of uptime can the host guarantee? Is it just 99.9%, or does the host also offer a higher guarantee (such as 99.99%)?
- Traffic spikes. How does the provider handle traffic spikes? What performance guarantees are in place for high-traffic periods?
- Remedies. What are the remedies if those guarantees are not met? If it’s a refund, what is the refund policy, and how is it calculated?
- Support response guarantees. What are the SLA-guaranteed support response times for different tiers of support?
- Contract clarity. Are the SLAs and other contractual obligations clear and specific? Or do they include broad disclaimers and vague language?
Aligning vendor capabilities with your organization’s policies
In addition to verifying that your hosting provider complies with any necessary regulations, you’ll also want to make sure that any provider you choose also aligns with your organization’s internal policies and standards.
Your organization might have its own unique requirements, but here are some different things that you’ll want to consider:
- Internal security and IT policies. Make sure that the vendor can meet your organization’s policies and standards. For example, you might require role-based access restrictions, activity logging, etc.
- Data residency requirements. You might need data stored in a certain physical location (e.g., within the European Union to simplify GDPR compliance) and/or in a certain way. It’s important to check if the vendor can meet these requirements. Most quality hosting providers offer multiple data center locations; for example, Kinsta lets you choose from 37 different data center locations.
- Third-party risk management. Most hosting providers will rely on certain third-party service providers. You’ll want to understand how the vendor manages their own suppliers and whether these relationships comply with your organization’s internal standards.
When in doubt, reach out to the hosting provider with your questions to get specific answers to important organizational policies.
Question checklist for organizational alignment
- Compliance documentation. Can the hosting service provide documentation that proves its compliance with relevant certifications and regulations that your organization requires?
- Data localization. What tools and options does the hosting provider offer to help you comply with your organization’s data localization requirements?
- Third-party integrations. What third-party services does the hosting vendor integrate with? How are these relationships managed, and what security measures are in place for third-party integrations?
- Hosting account access. What tools do you have for controlling access to your hosting account and implementing your organization’s role-based restrictions?
- Logging functionality. Can you log users’ actions inside your hosting account? What other tools do you have to monitor access to your organization’s hosting account?
Common pitfalls and red flags to watch for
While we’ve focused on looking at a vendor’s “green flags”, there are also some common “red flags” and issues that you’ll want to pay attention to when conducting a vendor audit.
Here are some of the most common issues that you’ll want to watch for:
- Vague or weak service-level agreements. We covered the importance of having SLAs in a previous section. However, be wary of providers with weak or vague SLAs that don’t offer meaningful guarantees and/or remedies.
- Punitive overage fees or other added costs. While overage fees are not inherently an issue, they can be problematic if they’re structured in an overly punitive way for situations that your organization might find itself in. Beyond that, analyze other potential costs, such as add-on fees, exit fees, and any other fees you might need to pay.
- Issues with scalability. If a host can’t scale resources during high-usage periods, you might run into issues with downtime or slowdowns during traffic spikes or other resource-intensive periods.
- Lack of transparency. A quality vendor should be transparent about its infrastructure and security documentation—otherwise, it’s a red flag. For example, Kinsta has a dedicated transparency page that shares details about its compliance, infrastructure, security, etc.
Question checklist for pitfalls and red flags
- Unclear SLAs. Does the SLA have vague uptime guarantees and all kinds of liability exclusions?
- Punitive hidden costs. What are the costs for overages, add-ons, and exit fees? Are they fair, or are they overly punitive?
- Inflexible contracts. Does the vendor have punitive exit clauses or exit fees that make it difficult to leave?
- Limited scalability. Are there constraints on scaling resources? If so, how might these constraints affect your organization in real-world scenarios you will likely encounter?
- Lack of transparency. Is the provider unwilling to share specific details about its infrastructure or security documentation?
Conducting a vendor comparison and making a decision
If you’re considering multiple vendors, having an objective way to compare them can be helpful. However, this can be tricky sometimes because different vendors might be especially strong or weak in certain areas.
Here are some suggestions for narrowing down the field and choosing the right vendor for your organization…
Create an audit scorecard template
To objectively compare vendors while accounting for relative strengths and weaknesses, you can create an audit scorecard template based on the criteria that are most important to your business.
A good place to start is to rank vendors based on the following:
- Security
- Compliance
- Support
- Performance and scalability
- Cost
If there are additional areas that are essential to your business, you can also include those as another category in your audit scorecard.
Depending on your organization’s unique needs, you also might want to weight certain areas higher than others. For example, if you absolutely need some type of industry-specific regulatory compliance, you should emphasize that compliance in your audit scorecard.
Utilize trial periods to assess real-world performance
Once you’ve narrowed your list down to just a few candidates, you can utilize trial periods to test real-world performance and support before making a final decision.
While not all providers will offer free trials, most do at least offer some type of refund guarantee. Kinsta offers both, with a one-month free trial of the Single 35k and WP 2 plans, as well as a 30-day money-back guarantee that applies to all plans.
Use these trial periods to run your own performance tests to see if the vendor’s real-world performance matches its claims. You can also interact with support to get a feel for response times and quality.
How Kinsta meets compliance and security standards
Kinsta offers WordPress and web application hosting that meets essential security and compliance standards.
Kinsta’s plans include essential security features such as isolated containers, encryption, firewalls, DDoS protection, malware protection, automatic backups, etc. Kinsta also complies with essential certifications such as ISO 27001 and SOC 2.
To give you insights into security, compliance, and more, Kinsta has a detailed Trust Center that offers transparent information about Kinsta’s infrastructure and compliance. You’ll also benefit from single-tier support with an average initial response time of under two minutes, as well as clear and precise SLAs.
Many organizations have found success with Kinsta, including those with strict compliance requirements. You can read about these stories in Kinsta’s many case studies, but here are a few notable customer experiences:
Summary
Conducting a thorough hosting vendor audit is crucial for ensuring security, compliance, and performance.
By evaluating providers against these key criteria, your organization can minimize risks and optimize your hosting strategy. You can also use this as a framework to perform regular reviews of your hosting provider as new regulations and threats evolve.
If you’re looking for a managed hosting solution that prioritizes security, compliance, and high-performance infrastructure, Kinsta offers a strong example of a provider that meets these standards.
Kinsta
Senior Editor at Kinsta, WordPress Web Developer, and Content Writer. Outside of all things WordPress, I enjoy the beach, golf, and movies. I also have tall people problems.
