Published
What does the uptime commitment actually cover?
Ask what is measured, over what period, and what happens when it is missed. A commitment with no measurement method and no remedy is marketing copy.
Also ask about planned maintenance windows — many commitments exclude them entirely.
Are backups verified, and how fast is a restore?
Every provider takes backups. Far fewer test restores. Ask for the restore procedure, the typical restore time for your data volume, and when a restore was last performed successfully.
Where does the data live, and who can reach it?
Data location matters for latency and, depending on your sector, for compliance. Ask which region hosts the data and backups, and which staff or subcontractors have administrative access.
What happens at 2am?
Find out whether support at that hour is a monitored on-call engineer or a ticket queue opened the next morning, and whether it is included or billed.
How do you leave?
Confirm you can export your data and configuration in a usable format, that you control your own domain registration, and that notice periods are reasonable. Portability is the best protection against a relationship going bad.
The short version
Compare providers on verified restores, real escalation paths and exit terms. Price differences are small next to the cost of a bad outage handled badly.