I raise a ticket of server down and no response... not assignment to a staff member... nothing...
time goes by and nothing!
No one online on the chats --- this was the 1 very thing that kept me away from my previous hosts. What's the deal?
I'd like to start an ongoing thread here listing the 'Good Hosters with Good TELEPHONE tech support'. In other words, out of the 1,000s of host companies, this may cut it down to less than a dozen.
( And for all you Hosters out there who really want your company to grow, and want to know how, - it's easy: just read here.)
Good telephone support is the #1 ultimate requirement, because:
-It's a lot faster and easier for both the user and the host company, because you can state and answer all questions and clarifications on the spot, you don't need to continually pass new emails with new questions and clarifications, back and forth for days on end, until the issue is solved. It saves tech time and user's time. And saves a lot of nerves.
- It's the best way to sort the good guys from the bad. A bad company isn't going to bother to answer the phone, - or will make you wait way too long, - because they are likely getting endless complaints. The good guys are always ready to answer the phones, with a friendly voice, - because they really WANT to please the customer.
- If a company can't be bothered to pick up the phone, we can't be bothered to even consider them. They're a joke, and so won't be listed here on this thread. (So, before adding or listing any Hosters here, please verfify that they do have Good, quick, friendly, telephone support,; ideally 24/7, but 9am to 10pm might be acceptable, if it was supplemented by some emergency contact.
AND:
- Hoster ALSO needs good EMAIL support (and preferably, Chat online, extended hour availability). (I spend a lot of time overseas). It sems all emails should get a non-automated response within about an hour, - and then support should jump on fixing any problem.
I only need support a few times a year. To answer some questions, or fix a problem, or do an install. That's lesss than 1 hour total, so any company paying maybe $18/hour tech support should be able to handle this. It IS reasonable to charge a custm for extended calls, beyond say, 90minutes a year, IF you don't count the 80%? Of times an issue is the Hoster;s fault of stmg gone wrong, and don't count the 'hold' times.
ALSO IMPORTANT:
- Uptime
- site Speeds
- Monthly plans, no contract (Only a dishonest host will try to force you into a contract, where they can then ignore you.)
- Reasonable price. (? Maybe $12 to $18/month for a basic business site. We don't need massive bandwitdths, - we all know that's an overselling scam, and can't ever be delivered.)
- a good upgrade plan of bigger options. Maybe even VPS.
- Dedicated IP, and availbility of SSL
-PHP 5, mysql, phpMyAdmin, etc
- cPanel ( Some Hosts are using problematic panels, like Hsphere, which are slow to load, slow in operation, require many more clicks, have too many options, spread apart on many separate pages. Time is money, and this really slows down the ability of a small business to manage his own site in effective time. For example, one WHT user wrote somewhere: "I don't feel that HSphere's interface is nice at all, although I have worked with cPanel and DA all my life... I just found it to include un-necessary features or split features up in to different hard to find pages, such as backups - mysql backups you had to find on a completely different page than file backups, and then there were options to have it in the home directory or server-end backup, in which then you had to wait a good 10 minutes before it was ready. cPanel, just hit backup and hit download and instantly it does everything you need...".
I have used several hosters. Currently on Aplus.net and Godad, which have phone support, and mediocre service.
My LIST So Far:
- Liquidweb: a very impressive company with good, 24 hour support. But to get dedicated IP, you need to go with their $25/month plan. Yikes!
- NewIdeaHosting.com. A very small company. My call was returned, and the owner chatted with me for an hour on the phone! Plans have small bandwidth, but promises No overselling, and personalized attention. Extra $5 for dedi IP. He specializes in Small business sites, and small eCommerce sites. He has only 250 accounts, on 3 servers. He rents servers from the Equinox data center of Chicago. Seems exceptionaly honest.
- MegaHosters. Excellent phone support and WHT reviews. But company was taken over by another company, and so may well go downhill in future. Another problem: uses Hsphere.
- Steadfast. Has a good rep on WHT, and seems impressive. Tech answered the phone immediately, but they say they prefer emails. Sales phone has limited hours. Good price on $20 SSL. But, uses Hshhere.
- JodoHost 24 hour phone. But, uses Hsphere. An Indian company with office in Florida, and good rep. I like the idea of outsourcing phone support, if it makes it more available and affordable. But, the accent on the phone was very hard for me to understand, so maybe this might not work.....
- Hostgator. Yes, it's a big overseller, but seems to get good reviews/results anyway, and good phone support.
- ? ThePrimeHost ?? Mostly good WHT reviews; some dissenters. Site says 24hour phone, but when I called on several nights, no one ever answered...
- Can anyone add to this list? Please list only hosts that meet the above minimum requirements of phone support, etc. Especially useful is hosters you've tried.
TO AVOID:
- Avoid Arvixe. I had a horrid experience with them, here: [WHT forum]:/showthread.php?p=5097822#post5097822
- Avoid WebHostingBuzz. This company never returned my phone msessage inquiries.
we are thinking of moving to rackedge, as we need an nl server and they offers are pretty good, but we don't know how good support is, has anyone used them? what's your experience? if it was bad, have you found something better?
View 8 Replies View RelatedIt's imperative for you to know that web host features does not just stop with Unilimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth. There are other very salient features to which some people looking for a host provider have ignore, it is CUSTOMER SUPPORT.
You will not value the importance of a good customer support until you start having problems which you want resolved in the shortest possible time. For some host providers this is like telling them to do the impossible.
It is sad that some of the so-called reputable host don't even have a ticket system not to talk of an on-line chat system where you can ask questions and receive answers in real time.
So, for those of you that are new to hosting or want to change your host, then you had better look for a host that offers good customer support either by Chat, ticket system or forum.
Things have become a little hectic.
I decided to go for a budget dedicated server because the shared hosting I was using was grinding to a halt several times a week.
I haven't used a dedicated server before, and wasn't 100% sure what I needed, so after lot's of going round in circles, I found the 123-reg £49.99 server and unlimited bandwidth, so I ordered it....and waited, and waited. Not so much as an order confirmation, or reply to my emails asking what was going on. Not a great start, so I cancelled the order.
OK, I have a budget of around £60 a month.
I need the server to be able to do mod_rewrites.
Unlimited, or a generous amount of bandwidth per month is important.
Good service if it all goes wrong is essential.
Preferably UK based, but will consider other countries if contacting them isn't a problem.
I need some kind of control panel as well.
i will be running a Vbulletin + VBSEO (hence the mod_rewrites) installation and a joomnla installation with lots of large images if that makes any difference.
There are a lot of people whether their web hosting providers are good or not. After months of purchasing their web hosting account they might discover that their web hosting providers are so bad. Therefore, you’d better checking your web hosting provider.
One of the most important parts related to web hosting is the supporting services. So when you purchase a new web hosting account, try to check their supporting services. Try to ask them a few technical questions even you don’t have a problem. It just tests their supporting quality. How do they answer your questions quickly? Ask yourself this question. If they spend a lot of time “two or three days”, it might be poor service. For this situation, my advice is to cancel your account. The most of web hosting companies offer 30 days money back and try another web hosting company.
There are many supports kinds:
* HelpDesk
* Live chat
* Supporting via Phone
* Supporting forum
* And so on
This is all about the supporting part for your web hosting provider. So this is very important to check this service.
I have servers with softlayer current paying $2000 a month for 3 dedicated servers. THey are set up and work perfectly.
Issue is i was not aware that softlayer doesnt do "managed" support, would like to know if anyone has a good third party company that works with softlayer.
the tools they have on the portal our great so really would like to find a company thatworks with them. the co that softlayer suggested doesnt do windows support go figure!
our VPS hosting company did an upgrade the other day and now something is wrong with our home page, it takes about 30sec to load. They keep saying its a php problem, but the scripting is fine, the engine is fine and the only thing that changed is that they did an upgrade.
They don't seem to be able to grasp the problem, and it is making my boss go nuts. A web guy a know said it definately had to be something at their end, and everyone else is at a loss.
Do they do a good job of supporting OSCommerce? I want to customize stuff using OSCommerce for my site. Let me know from those who have used OSCommerce with Cirtex hosting.
View 4 Replies View RelatedI am referring a friend to JaguarPC but he wants more options so he wants me to recommend 3 different shared webhosts to him. What are two other great shared hosting providers that have as good support as JaguarPC?
View 7 Replies View RelatedI came to this site few days back only and was going through various discussions. After being on this website since last 1 week I am really impressed that members are really helpful to other members with their fair and valuable suggestions.
I do have a quick question for you and need your suggestions:
Q: Which web host I should go with where I will get around 20GB of space with PHP, MySQL, FFMPEG support.
Please recommend me a host with high uptime, good http response time, and reliable to host considering a long term relationship.
I need to get a couple of dedicated windows servers and am trying to decide between SoftLayer and a couple other providers.
So, how is SoftLayer for customer support, network performance/uptime, pricing, and just overall?
Any recommendations?
i have been hosting as a reseller with gazzin.com on their windows servers for past some years and in this period i suppose they have shifted their datacenter more than twice causing a great problem to me and all my clients.
the latest period of the shift being going on currently i request you all to go through the transcript below which i had with their support center. when we talk about a refund for this downtime i suppose the owner 'PAUL' just stops responding ......
Has anybody heard of Flash Support and Real AudioVideo Support? MMHosting.com offers this kind of support and I wonder if it's effective?
What do you think of it?
I'm undecided between an upcoming dedicated hosting server and am moving between Softlayer and ThePlanet. My decision partly comes down to support.
I've read many reviews on WHT about both companies, but not necessarily comparing them from people who have experienced both.
So my questions (keep in mind this is my first dedicated. I have used VPS in the past with good support) Which offers MORE support (not better) - I'm curious which company might consider my support questions as "part of the default service package" or "need additional service plan for that" More detailed support - my usual experience with support is support staff assume you already know a high level so it may take going forward and back 5 times via email to get a full answer
Overall support satisfaction - any other comments
Any experience with Good Avocado and their reseller plan?
What about Thinkhost, good avocado is partnering with?
Wind and solar energy, it sounds all good, the reseller plan is awesome.
Any real life experience?
I've been with Hivelocity for 2 years. Occasionally we have problems, but it works. Their support staff can do very simple things relatively fast, however if you have some serious problems, e.g. failed disk and need to be replaced and do restoration from backup, it will be hell!
They will NOT do what asked in Reload Request, delayed answer to chat, no answer to tickets for many hours.
So far I'm very disappointed of Hivelocity support.
I have dedicated servers - which are overkill as I only host 10 sites (small). I am now looking to move to a VPS solution and would like to know if anyone can recommend a good UK company (that offers true UK hosting) with good uptime and support?
Cpanel and Unix VPS, but may also require windows vps - so a company that offers both will be beneficial, but long term view to migrate over to Linux
does anyone have any views of The NY Noc they could share with me, before I shift my site over there (and hope for the best) ?
I know they've been around a while, but I heard some bad stuff about their VPS servers,
I want to make sure I'm going for some good hosting..
my web site has about 4,000 pageviews and currently working fine on shared host. i plan to build a forum to support my products. i just want to know if the 128 MBs VPS is good plan for my web site?
View 14 Replies View RelatedI am considering the following VPS:
40 GB Disk Space
Fairshare of a Dual Xeon/Opteron CPU
512 MB Dedicated RAM
2 GB Burstable RAM
750 GB Premium Transfer
Fully Managed
I have about 10 sites that run straight HTML and 5 WordPress low traffic sites (which obviously use a database). Will the server above support my needs adequately?
Is cheapvps a good provider for cheap vps'?
I searched and didn't find anything.
I need managed services since I don't know anything about server maintenance and I saw LunarHosts VPS (http://www.lunarpages.com/virtual-private-server/)
The deal sounds pretty good - 1000 GB Bandwidth, 20 GB Space, PHP, MySQL and managed services for $50 a month.
I wanted to know if anybody has tried them out? Are they good? Is their a better value anywhere else?
is GoDaddy any good?
View 14 Replies View RelatedI heard many blogger appreiate this company, but I a little hestitate to use their service because I have to pay one-year fee once.
View 24 Replies View RelatedCan anyone let me know where to look?
View 14 Replies View RelatedI was looking for a webhost with adwords credit, and cheap.
When I went to Bluehost and Hostgator, the more well-known sites they had $50 adwords credit each but couldn't get their price down to less than 58$ a year. With Fatcow seems to be $44 a year and also have $50 adwords credit.
Does somebody know their reliability? I was searching google and the host seems to be a new person in town and that might be a problem.
Preferably I was searching for $20 a year webplans but I can't seem to find one with adwords credit. I want to use the adwords to drive quick traffic to a new site. I am not sure should I go for the adwords credit+ hosting or hosting seperate + adwords seperate. The keywords I'm gonna use only have 1,000-10,000 max visitors a month. If the credit is only valid for a limited time than I'd maybe better off with a both seperate.
i want to know if softlayer will fit my needs?
1) i want to use svn
2) i will only host about 3 small-ish sites with images and maybe one cast-control.
has any used them and what is there up-time like.
Anyone know where to get decently priced shelves for racks? looking to purchase 10-20 of them.
View 13 Replies View Relatedi am interested to install Litespeed on my vps (with cpanel)
it is good?
After speaking to a colleague about some major benefits of EC2 for on-demand hosting I've been very interested in learning more.
I've spent the past 2 evenings trolling through Amazon Doc's and blog posts and have a fair assessment about how things work but I'm at a stopping point.
There doesn't seem to be a dedicated EC2 area here on Sitepoint and the Amazon EC2 forums seem geared more towards 'advanced' users.
Are there any reliable communities that are more for the beginner?
I've got a LAMP webserver Instance running on EC2 but I'm very unclear about how to login and begin adding files and managing the data. I'm sure it's pretty simple but the documentation pretty much loses me when they start discussing Security Groups and public/private keys.
I'm not much of a server admin but have grown pretty comfortable on our FC4 dedicated boxes that we currently host on.