Liberate Your Digital World

How to check a provider’s independence yourself

A great many providers describe themselves as independent, and the word carries no fixed definition. Rather than take anybody’s claim at face value — ours included — there are three things you can check for yourself, and together they take about twenty minutes.

First, read the acceptable use policy rather than the marketing. That document, not the homepage, is what governs whether your account can be suspended. Look at what it actually prohibits, how much discretion it reserves, whether suspension requires notice, and whether you are owed an explanation. Broad language about content a provider finds objectionable is where the discretion lives, and a verbal assurance does not override a written term.

Second, find out who is underneath. Many hosting companies resell somebody else’s infrastructure, which means the upstream provider’s policies apply to you whether or not you have ever seen them. Ask directly: whose data centre, whose network, whose mail infrastructure, and whose terms govern each one. A provider who answers that plainly is more credible than one who answers with adjectives.

Third, check what leaving looks like, because that is the real measure of independence. Is your domain registered in your name? Can you export your site and your mail in standard formats? Is there a contract term? A provider you can leave on a week’s notice holds less power over you than one you cannot, whatever either of them says about values.

Apply all three to us as well. On the second one the answer is that the servers are ours: we own the hardware, in the United States, rather than reselling space on another host’s platform. We will tell you which entity holds your contract, what our acceptable use policy actually says, and what you would take with you if you left. Book a call and ask the awkward version of the question — it is an entirely reasonable thing to want answered before moving your business onto somebody’s infrastructure.