MossHosting.com: SharePoint Simplified - Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS)

• Ready To Buy VDS
• Ready To Buy Single / Dual Processor
• SharePoint Server Farms
• Infrastructure Options
• Federated / Onsite
• FAQ

FAQ

Q: What version of SharePoint are the hosting plans based on?
A: All plans use Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 unless noted otherwise.  The notable exception is the Search Server Express offer which uses an add-on to Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 

Q: Do you offer a trial server?
A:  Qualified customers may request a trial of our server-based products.

Q: Do I have to provide a credit card or other billing information for the trial?
A: Qualified customers may be required to have a credit card on file to take advantage of our SharePoint trials.  Your representative will explain what is required via phone or e-mail.

Q:  Are there any requirements to receive a trial SharePoint server?
A:  Yes. We require your business associated e-mail address, name, telephone number, basic information and background about your SharePoint project, and purchasing time frame.

Q: How long does it take to set up my SharePoint environment once I purchase a plan?
A:  We can build your environment in 12-24 hours after receiving your completed configuration questionnaire.  More complex SharePoint server farms may take longer to build depending on how much equipment is required and what customization must be done.

Q: What happens to my data when I upgrade my evaluation server?
A:  All of your data stays intact and we configure the rest of the platform’s features such as backups, activating add-ons, etc.

Q: How purchase the services, upgrade my trial server - how long will it take?
A: You can purchase a plan by contacting us through the Contact Us page of our website. Our sales team will contact you immediately and send out any contract materials for your review.   Once we receive your completed materials and any set up fee, we will start work immediately during the hours M-F 9AM-5PM EST, otherwise expect your full storage, other features and user quota delivered by the Next Business Day.  Any questions related to orders should be sent to neworders@sharepointhosting.com.

Q:  What forms of payment do you accept?
A: All major credit cards, money orders, PayPal, personal and business checks.  

Q: What are the main differences between your plans?
A: Plans differ by storage capacity, features, server technology, and add-ons.  Any of our representatives can provide a detailed comparison between two plans or a competing offer from another provider.

Q: How many user licenses do I need?
A: However many users can access the site is the number of licenses you need. You can check this by visiting Active Directory People and Groups through the Administrative Tools section of the Windows Start Menu. If you use a custom authentication provider the total number of users contained within that database plus any Active Directory accounts is the number of MOSS user licenses you would need. For anonymous access (public websites) you need an internet connector ($800/month per server) plus the number of MOSS user licenses for anyone who can log in and make changes to the site regardless of if the user is contained in Active Directory or some other system.

Q: What are the main differences between Shared Hosting, Dedicated WSS 3.0 servers and Dedicated MOSS servers?
A:  Shared Hosting services are great for any small business’ SharePoint needs as well as project level collaboration needs of larger businesses.  Everyone from mom and pop businesses to larger corporations use SharePoint on a tactical basis with us every day.  Dedicated Servers are for businesses or projects that require a higher level of customization or access to the SharePoint application, Windows Server OS or any other component of the environment.  The chart below is an overview of feature comparisons and capabilities but is not an exhaustive list.

Capabilities	Shared	Dedicated WSS	Dedicated MOSS
Price Range	$20-$250/month	$800/month+	$1,000/month+
Free SSL Encryption https://sitename.securespsites.com	Yes	Yes	Yes
Max SharePoint Storage	10GB	Several TB	Several TB
Unlimited Users	1000 limit	Yes	Per User Charge
Custom Backup Services	Yes	Yes	Yes
SharePoint Designer Compatible	Yes	Yes	Yes
SharePoint Skins Compatible	Yes	Yes	Yes
Custom URL (www.mydomain.com)	$49/set up fee	Yes	Yes
Custom SSL Certificates		Yes	Yes
Custom Code + 3rd Party Web Parts		Yes	Yes
Custom Firewall Rules & Security		Yes	Yes
Forms Based Authentication		Yes	Yes
Server Access (Terminal Services)		Yes	Yes
Live Server Snapshot at DR Site		Yes	Yes
Support Incident Packs		Yes	Yes
Development Services		Yes	Yes
Training Services		Yes	Yes
In-house Migration Services		Yes	Yes
Multi Server Farms		Yes	Yes
Business Data Catalog			Yes
Excel Services			Yes
Enterprise Search Features			Yes
Personalized My Sites			Yes
InfoPath Forms Services			Yes
KPI lists and Dashboards			Yes
Advanced Usage Reports			Yes
Content Management Engine for Public Sites (aka CMS)			Yes
SAP Integration			Yes

 

Q: What about Microsoft Exchange for e-mail?
A:  If you have your e-mail hosted by another provider or internally you can still use our services.   Many providers co-market Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint together.  This is typically why you will hear about them as one product, but they are completely independent products and can function independent of each other.

Q:  Who typically purchases your services and for what type of projects?
A:  The power of SharePoint is collaboration, and the power of using our services is the ability to grant access to diverse groups of users especially those external to your organization while still maintaining all the security you need.  You can use the Internet as an extension of your office and business with SharePoint.   Some IT departments recommend our services because our environment is outside of the corporate network.  This makes it easier to cross boundaries such as corporate firewalls and other security rules which make collaboration inherently more complex or difficult. 

Q:  Who uses your services today?
A:  Over 1,500 organizations in 100 countries use our services today, and we have approximately 100,000 users under management globally.  Our customers range from the Military, energy companies,  state/local/federal agencies, Microsoft, foundations and non-profits, and departments at some of the most recognizable corporate brands internationally.  Microsoft has also highlighted our work in several different case studies available here.

Q:  What is the largest server you can offer?
A:  We build all environments based on Microsoft guidance.  The sizing of all individual servers or SharePoint Farms is based on your requirements.  We can offer a server with as little as 10GB of SQL storage for a public facing MOSS site, or as much as 10TB with a SharePoint Farm utilizing a SAN storage system.  Please contact us to discuss your exact requirements.  

Q:  What file formats can I upload to my SharePoint site?
A:  You may upload any type of file you choose by modifying the allowed file extensions on your SharePoint server. By default you may upload many commonly used file extensions such all those used by Microsoft Office and other common programs. 

Q:  What is the maximum file size I can upload to my SharePoint site?
A:  The default settings of our servers can handle file sizes of up to 100MB, but this can be changed to a maximum of 2GB.  Your ability to successfully upload a large file is dependent on your outbound (the upload speed) internet connection from your ISP. 

Q:  Can I take SharePoint data offline on my PC or laptop?
A: Yes you can take a copy of data contained on your SharePoint site offline on your PC using Outlook 2007 or Access 2007 depending on the data type you are using in SharePoint.  There are also third party products which do a good job of synchronizing changes you make offline – such as SharePoint Contributor (www.colligo.com). 

Q: What type of Internet Connection do I need to get the most out of the service?
A:  We recommend a minimum of a DSL connection (765kb/second down / 128kb/second up). The higher speed of your internet connection the more efficient your use of the site will be.  Remember that if you are in a small office with many people sharing the same internet connection any website will be slower.

Q: How do I create and manage users? Do I need to log into a separate control panel?
A:  Customers can choose to use Active Directory or upgrade their plan to include web-based user management (manage users from within the SharePoint site).  If you are unfamiliar with Active Directory or our other user management add-ons please contact us to request a live demo or a document with screenshots.  For our servers which integrate with your own Active Directory (Federated or VPN) you would manage your users based on your existing IT policies – we simply integrate with those systems and the established mechanisms for granting user access and changing passwords in a seamless manner.

Q:  How can I limit access to some areas while allowing access to other information (lists, documents and libraries)?
A: SharePoint permissions are flexible.  You can even have document level permissions.  If you want to restrict a particular area more so than others you enable what is called Unique Permissions for this area.  Once you have configured Unique Permissions, selected/added the groups or users, and modified their permissions in this area, you will have successfully limited or granted access to the area in question.  There is more information on this topic and others via our http://blog.sharepointhosting.com site – see the Screencast Tutorials.

Q: Can I playback videos and other media files using the service?
A:  While it is possible to upload videos and other media content to your SharePoint site we do not recommend the playback of media directly from the site as SharePoint was not designed to support this type of scenario (to play back media content from within SQL) – but that doesn’t mean that you can’t have media on your site – the architecture that we suggest and can provide is more effective.  For customers with media hosting requirements we use our Microsoft SilverLight streaming technology to allow playback of media content from servers that have been specifically tuned to deliver video on demand. 

Q: What Web Browsers does the service support?
A: SharePoint supports access from a variety of Web Browsers including Internet Explorer, Safari, FireFox, and Opera.  Not all SharePoint features and Microsoft Office integration features function the same  way when you use a browser other than Internet Explorer.  If you are branding the look and feel of your SharePoint site be sure to check it in each browser to ensure proper rendering.  Below is a chart which best describes Web Browser compatibility with SharePoint.

   WSS 3.0 System Requirements

Q:  What version of Microsoft Office is recommended for use with the service?
A:  The newer your version of Microsoft office is the better the integration experience will be between the hosted application and your client software running on your local PC.  Below is a chart which best ranks Microsoft Office integration with SharePoint as it relates to your Office version.  More detailed information is available here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e0d05a69-f67b-4d37-961e-2db3c4065cb9&DisplayLang=en

 

Q: What is the cost to use a custom domain name ( eg mydomainname.com ) with my SharePoint site?
A: A custom domain name and matching SSL certificate is included with every dedicated server plan. 

Q: Can I use a Secure Sockets Layer “SSL” connection with my SharePoint site?
A:  All hosting plans include SSL capabilities allowing you to connect to your SharePoint site secure via an https:// connection type.

Q: How secure are the services?
A: Our data centers are extremely secure and we use leading edge firewall and IDS systems.  Each SharePoint server must have certain security settings configured properly for optimal security and our provisioning scripts maximize the default installation’s security capabilities.  Depending on your exact requirements we offer Kerberos, Multi Factor Authentication, VPN’s, SSL and other mechanisms to help ensure that only authorized individuals have access to your data.

Q: Can I use SharePoint Designer with the service?
A: Yes you can use SharePoint Designer with our services

Q: Can I use InfoPath with the service?
A:  Yes you can use InfoPath forms with the services.  Web based InfoPath forms are a feature in InfoPath Forms Services which can be added on to any dedicated MOSS or WSS server plan.

Q: Can I install my own web parts, software, templates or DLL’s on the server?
A: Yes – you have full access and control of the environment from firewall rules to server side changes.  We request that you work with a representative at MOSSHosting.com to backup your data prior to making any changes –please get confirmation that there is a restore point just prior to your changes or do not make any server or site side changes.

Q: How many web parts are included?
A:  All standard SharePoint web parts are included – there are web parts that become available as you go from WSS, MOSS Standard and MOSS Enterprise.  We offer third party web parts as well – from Workflow to User Management modules.  These may have a start up cost to install and configure as well as a recurring cost to license.

Q: What are the policies and terms that apply to the services?
A:  Any use of our service implies that you accept and are governed by Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policies.  These two policies can be found below.  Please familiarize yourself and your users with these policies. 
Terms of Service
Acceptable Use Policy  
If you are found to be in violation of either of these policies in part or whole we may terminate or suspend your services without any warning or prior notice to ensure the availability of our services for the rest of our customers who are not violating our policies and or applicable state or local regulations and laws. 
The other agreement which may cover the use of your environment is our Master Services Agreement (MSA) – this agreement is executed with any customer seeking a longer term relationship (outside of month to month hosting) and has provisions for SLA, downtime, etc.
Other policies can be downloaded here: http://www.sharepointhosting.com/frequent-downloads.html. 

Q:  What does your Unlimited Bandwidth Policy Mean?
A: We do not meter your bandwidth or transfer unless your use negatively impacts other customers’ ability to use the service effectively or causes a situation which could do the same.  Technically this is known as “unmetered” bandwidth.  Please review our Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policies to determine if your use case is supported, or speak to a support or sales representative. 

Q: What does Migration Assistance mean?
A: Migration Assistance means that we will help you migrate data (not users or security) between another SharePoint hosting provider or an internal server to our hosted service – this is a paid service. Users and security generally will not transfer between Active Directory domains. If you use another authentication provider migration may be possible. If you want to integrate your existing Directory Service with our hosted offerings please review our Federated and on-site managed services.

Q:  What files and file sizes can I send to the SharePoint site with the e-mail enabled document library and list functionality?
A: Based on the permissions and other settings you configure for your e-mail enabled lists or libraries you may be able to e-mail in a file up tothe capabilities of e-mail to transfer large files – these are customizable settings on each server. Remember that your mailserver (your corporate e-mail system) may not allow you to send a file over a certain size.

Q: How do I get support and general or help related questions answered?
A:  We include three incidents/90 days of free support for each new customer – beyond that scope you will pay by incident outside of a server down (SLA covered) or regular maintenance type event. 
Tips & Tricks: we recommend that all customers visit http://blog.sharepointhosting.com and read each of the posts located on the blog as well as http://blogs.mosshosting.com.  These deal with many the common issues users have.  Also, there are over 100 SharePoint screencast tutorials we have produced to help with many “how to” type issues.  
Email: You can submit a support ticket by using the form on the Contact Us page of our website.  We aim to respond to all issues within 24 hours, however issues of a “how to” nature take a lower overall priority and are responded to on an availability basis.  
Chat:  You can also chat with us through our website.  The website chat is primarily available for sales and presales related questions, however there are often technical questions that can be quickly answered through this format or the representative will direct you to the contact form or create a ticket for you.   
Phone: Our support phone number is 302-824-7600 x 2 – we request that you submit a ticket (www.mosshosting.com/support/) describing your issue in detail and allow some time for review before calling.   
Response Times: Our internal goal is to examine all issues within 24 hours, but actual response times vary.  There is not a guaranteed response or resolution time.  All “how to” type issues naturally take a lower priority.
Paid Support: Paid support is available which includes additional phone and e-mail support for issues, questions about configuring certain features, and help with creating users.  Configuration of advanced features is covered by an SOW (scope of work) document which a maximum number of billed hours to the customer.  Contact our Sales Team to discuss your requirements and find more information.

Q: Are there issues using the service I should be aware of using the services? 
A: As with any software or service there are both inherit complexities and unexpected ones caused by software bugs, hardware errors or failures and many other factors which impact the overall performance and functionality.  Some things will be within our control and others will not be. Because SharePoint is a Microsoft product we rely directly on the support that Microsoft provides - we do not have access to the SharePoint source code and cannot make changes to it as needed. For example, some of our add-ons can only be deployed to new site collections or web-applications without additional set up fees to perform an inplace upgrade. 

Q: What does daily backup mean?
A:  As part of our Disaster Recovery plan, we are able to restore our hosting environments to the previous night’s data.  In the event an application server or database server fails we are able to restore it with a snap shot of your site’s data from the previous night. We do not keep this backup data for an extended period of time and we do not make any guarantees that it will be available to you if you request it from a certain period.  If you have special backup, data access or retention requirements please speak to us about adding additional backup or retention options to your hosting plan. Likewise, if you are planning on doing major customizations to your site please request a one-off backup.  You can request up to two (2) one-off backups per year without charge, otherwise you will need pay for some form of our Enhanced Backup Services.  We can also provide you a onetime backup of your site for $100 available for download for 1 week.

Q:  Do you charge for site data restoration?
A:  If you have any of our enhanced backup services we will not charge to provide data from one of the backup sets on hand – we will restore this data to an alternate URL and you can download the documents or lists data you need and upload the data to your production site.  In the event of data corruption we will overwrite the existing site with a backup.  If your request falls beyond that scope or you do not have any of our enhanced backup services then we will use commercially reasonable efforts to help you with charges based on our standard hourly rates – we do not retain data beyond the scope of our DR planning so it is in your interest to participate in some form of our enhanced backup services if you have unique requirements for data recovery.

Q: Are there additional backup options?
A:  Yes we offer several other site backup service options with our plans which we call our Enhanced Backup Services.  We can continually backup and protect your SharePoint site and preserve snap shots of this data for any period of time you would like using our powerful Equallogic SAN storage and Data Protection Manager 2007.  This protection can extend to an individual document or list item.  We can also provide you with external access to this backup data. 
The plan provides a backup of the past 7 days, three weekly snapshots retained for 30 days, and three monthly backups retained for 90 days, and on-demand access to download your most recent backup made the previous night.

Daily	Daily backups retained for 7 days
Weekly	Weekly backups retained for 30 days
Monthly	Monthly backups retained for 90 days
Access	Access to download your most recent backup on-demand

These value-add enhanced backup services are priced on a utilization basis so please contact us to discuss your requirements and options. 

Q: What type of servers and hardware do you use?
A: Dell 1950, 2950 and R900 servers with 2-4 processors and 8GB to 64GB of memory depending on the role or requirements.  We also use Equallogic SAN Storage, Cisco and HP networking products.

Q: How many customers do you have?
A: We provide services to over 1,500 corporate and government accounts.

Q: What type of data center infrastructure do you have?  Is it certified?
A: We operate in two tier 4 data center footprints near Philadelphia, PA - both facilities are SAS 70 II compliant and pass other standard industry certifications related to security, redundancy and safety.   Each facility is top notch – containing only the best security, power, UPS, generation, cooling and fire detection and suppression systems.  Our facility certifications apply to the physical facilities that house our equipment and the network POP’s we draw our connectivity from as opposed to the actual SharePoint application meeting any industry certifications – certifying the application is only available to dedicated server customers.    We lease both facilities from Switch & Data (www.switchanddata.com ) and SunGard Availability Services (www.sungard.com).

Q:  Are the services HIPAA compliant?
A:  Our services are HIPAA ready. That means they can be made compliant with a gap analysis and audit of an independent firm. Our  Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy specifically prohibit the storage of any personal data (including medical records, SSN’s) using the service unless such an audit and certification has taken place by an independent party.   We cannot be held legally responsible to protect third party’s medical or personal information using the service unless we specifically agree to do so in writing. Do not use the service for this purpose unless authorized in writing in advance.  Please consult your own legal resources before using any hosted service for medical or personal information.

Q: When do you do maintenance?
A:  We do maintenance on as needed basis and during our regular scheduled maintenance windows.  Our scheduled maintenance windows are during off hours / non-business hours and on the weekends.   You may experience slower service or unavailability during these times.  This is normal and to be expected from time to time.  For example, during off hours each night we back up all our servers and during this process data may be temporarily locked in order to get a clean snap shot.  Again, this behavior is normal and should be expected.  We do not notify your end users or your customers of maintenance during regular windows.  During any business hours maintenance which is not of an emergency nature we will notify your site collection administrators (located on your SharePoint site at Site Settings > Site Collection Administrators) when the work is taking place and when it is expected to be complete.  Any regular or emergency maintenance does not impact our SLA.

Q: What if you cannot meet your Service Level Agreement (SLA) ?
A: For every business day of down time we will provide the corresponding credit to your account up to one month of service (for every billing cycle).

Q: What if I am unhappy with the service?
A:  We will work diligently to resolve any issues that you experience, however if you are still not 100% satisfied you may terminate your contract at anytime.  Month to month hosting has no contract or long term commitment, and therefore has no SLA provisions of our contracted services. In month to month hosting you benefit from flexibility. Long term contracts may be terminated pursuant to the terms, conditions and obligations contained therein.

Q: Do you have a reseller program and I can resell your service?
A:  We have  a partner program.

Q: Do you have a Partner Program?
A:  We have a Partner Program tailored to large and enterprise size organizations which can add significant value and volume to our hosting business by referring or reselling dedicated server customers.  The Partner Program is based on either a referral program with commissions or a traditional reseller model.  If you are a hardware, software reseller, LAR or VAR we will be happy to speak with you regarding our programs and how we can add a significant SaaS revenue to your business. 

Q: How long have you been hosting SharePoint?
A: We were the first company to provide SharePoint hosting services in the Software as a Service (SaaS) model over eight years ago.   Our work with SharePoint Products and Technologies has been highlighted by Microsoft as the industry standard to follow in several case studies.

Q:  Do you have any non-profit discounts?
A:  We provide discounts to non-profits on a case by case basis.  Please contact us to see if your organization is eligible for sponsorship or discount.  Some examples of eligible organizations are:
Community Groups, Animal Shelters, User Groups, and Foundations.

Q:  What makes you different from other companies that offer hosted SharePoint?
A: We specialize in SharePoint – it is the only thing we do.  We are not an all things to all people hosting company.  Our business goals are driven by value as opposed to volume.  Because of this we can maintain service at a high level and with a higher level of technical confidence.  When traditional Web Hosting companies offer SharePoint they view it as just another revenue stream and comingle it with other unrelated and non-Microsoft products creating a confusing offering and less than desirable experience.  Our service delivery model, size and specialization make us the best choice for your managed SharePoint service requirements.  We apply our expertise to everything Microsoft and  SharePoint – from WSS, MOSS, Dynamics, Project Server, PerformancePoint, and Commerce Server – building solutions like shared hosting to executive dash boards and EPM. 

Q:  What other services do you provide?
A: We have the capability to extend Microsoft-centric hosting across the entire Microsoft product line where there is SharePoint integration involved.  Also, since our owner is a professional consultancy organization we have extensive professional services capabilities which meet the requirements for other elements of SharePoint design and development including workflow, branding, intranets/extranets, partner portals and other industry vertical applications. 

Q:  Who can I contact to discuss any additional questions?
A: salesteam@sharepointhosting.com or 302-824-7600 x 1