Greets,

I was wondering how the smaller webhosts handles the support? I mean, to provide a good and fast support, you need to have someone answering support emails, creating accounts, etc every couple of hours. What do you do at nights, on weekends and holidays? How many people do you need to offer a good and fast support?

Rhetorical question: Why do you need someone to do those every couple of hours?

Personally I'd say that automated account creation combined with a good FAQ should handle everything "routine", and non-routine stuff can probably wait a couple hours anyway.

Just my $0.02.

Well... I work near 18 hr daily 7 days a week, Today here is the Independece Day, and I'm working . Since my partener have personal problems, he can't help me now. But we usualy cover us. I mean, when I sleep, he wake up, and so :)
Anyway, In the near future (1 month or less) I go to hire a guy to help me with the support.

If you're just starting out, I suggest getting a partner. That way you can cover each other and support the customers. Later on, hire someone to help.

n/a

I think tech support is probably the one area of hosting you can't say "We'll deal with it tomorrow."

If you were a hosting customer and your site was down or something was wrong, would you be happy waiting 10-12 hours for a reply from tech support? Would you stay with that host?

It just seems that it is a 24/7 job. That you can't take any time off. Specially if you get customers from all over the world. It's a must to have a partner/employee if you want to make it in this business.