Hosting Support Fact and Fiction

by
Terry Henry

The world of hosting has gone insane, rock bottom prices, 1000 plus emails, content editors that turn out cookie cutter websites using templates. Everyone is trying to make a dollar selling hosting, from the local web designer (Limited Support), firms reselling hosting services from another top level hosting companies (Can be good or bad support in this arena) and lets not forget providers hosting thousands to a million plus domains.

What makes a great hosting company, the bottom line is customer support. In a perfect world, support would not exist, but in reality it's needed. So what defines great service? Let's look at the options offered by most hosting companies.

Phone Support-Some people believe that phone support is the only way to go, but in reality it can sometimes be very frustrating! Most hosting companies do not use senior support staff on the front line of customer support. In some cases you cannot even get access to the people with the knowledge. What you end up usually is low paid staff that use drill down sheets to provide you with an answer, in 80% of the cases this will work. If you have a problem outside the norm, support staff usually won't be able to answer your question and will refer it to senior support staff. You remain on hold, upon return; they try and convey the answer that was given to them and in most cases in a very incoherent manner. Not saying all hosting companies do it this way, but some of the big players do, remember hosting is a business and support is a liability. You don't pay $25.00 per hour for phone support when you can do it for $8.00! It's all about the bottom line!

Support Tickets is excellent if done right, this usually gets you in contact with a real support technician, it may not be as quick as the phone, but in reality it is a much better system in most cases. Most companies that offer support tickets as there main line of defensive, will usually answer your question within the hour, in the event of a major outage, you will hear from them within a few hours. But the truth is, you usually get the right answer to your question. Better yet you get a ticket id and the ticket remains open in writing until the issue is solved.

Call Back Service - Some companies use a call back service. You open a support ticket and the support staff looks at your issue, finds the problem and then calls you and walks you through the solution. This is a great system, offers the personal approach and allows the support staff to try and find the answer before you are on the phone with them.

The bottom line, do your research, go to review sites and look at all your options and don't buy on price alone, let's be honest, if a company is offering hosting under $5.00 per month and in some cases unlimited packages, where does the money come from for the support? It's a business remember and business is about profit and losses and most companies want to make money.

Here are some hosting sites that I feel will help educate and provide you with the right information on selecting the right hosting provider.

http://www.thewhir.com/ http://www.hostreview.com/ http://whreviews.com/ http://www.webhostmagazine.com/pcworld.asp

About the Author

Terry Henry is Operations Manager for the Hendev Group (Henry Marketing and Development) www.hendev.com If you have any questions about hosting or consulting you can reach him at terry@hendev.com

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