The more information, the better. Be prepared to answer these questions…

• Does the sale just contain web hosting, or does it also contain the sale of domain names and website design?
• What is actually being sold? All the hardware and assets or just the clients?
• What is the total number of domains hosted?
• Are there additional domain names registered for the business?
• Are these included in the sale?
• Are all the domain names registered with the same registry? Who is this?
• How many domain names are registered with each registry?
• What wholesale price are the domain names and what is the retail sale price for the .com .net .org .info etc?
• Is it possible to take over the domain registry account that comes with the hosted sites?
• What name servers are used for the hosting accounts, and if this is a domain name, does this form part of the sale?
• Is the DNS clustered or not?
• What percentage of the DNS do you control?
• What data centre is the DNS hardware with?

There are more important questions to come…

• What is the main reason for wanting to sell the web hosting clients?
• Why are you selling only certain web hosting clients?
• What year did the web hosting business begin?
• What type of legal entity is the company?
• Are there any other directors or shareholders in the company?
• Is there a certain jurisdiction or State the company is under?
• Are there any legal proceedings against the company?
• How many full or part time employees are there, and what are their roles?
• How is technical support managed?
• Is technical support outsourced?
• How many support tickets are handled on a monthly basis?
• How many hours is dedicated to support each month?
• Are you aware of any customers who would prefer not to have their dedicated server moved from where it is at your data centre, to our data centre?

And a few more…

• Does your web hosting client base use WHMCS for its billing system?
• Will you allow us access to your WHMCS to confirm accounts and billing amounts?
• Will you provide reports from WHMCS showing income forecast and sales by product for the next three months, and the Annual income report for the previous three years?
• Is there a breakdown of the products that are sold and their pricing and volumes sold?
• Do you own or lease the shared, VPS and dedicated servers?
• What is the monthly cost and the monthly revenue for each of these types?
• What other monthly expenses are involved, such as co-location, leases, licenses or outsourced support?
• Are there any contracts still in place for any of the servers?
• Are lease or contract payments monthly or annually, and when?
• What are the payment methods and the proportions of clients using each payment method? For example, payment by credit card, Paypal, Google Checkout, Bank transfer, cheque?
• Are the credit card expiry dates all contained in the WHMCS customer file?
• Are all the credit card details up to date?
• Do all the customers get billed on the same day of the month, or are they billed on their monthly anniversary date?
• What is the frequency of the billing, and the numbers of each, for example, how many are monthly, two monthly, quarterly, six monthly, annually, bi-annually, tri-annually?

Not too many more now…

• How many VPS’s do you host?
• What is the control panel for the VPS?
• Where is the data centre for the VPS servers?
• How many dedicated servers do you have hosted?
• Do you own these, lease these, or the client owns these?
• What are the specifications of the dedicated servers?
• Are the dedicated servers at the same data centre as the VPS servers?
• How many shared (reseller) servers do you operate in the business?
• What are the specifications of the shared servers?
• Are the shared servers owned by you, or leased?
• How many shared accounts are there?
• How many reseller accounts are there?
• What operating system are the servers using?

Well done! Now we can come to a good agreement about the price…