I'm seriously considering a particular host or two, but I find out that the company is basically 2 or 3 guys working out of who knows where. I assume they have their servers on Rack or something similar and probably do a fine job with their customers. I've read some good reviews of their hosting company on here.

My question is....to find a really "good" host, should I look for a certain number of staff members that can handle signups, support issues, and maintenence. Should they have been in business a certain number of months/years?

What are the redflags that I should look out for?

I cant say how many. But Do not take any of those "Human Click" or other online help buttons for anything more than a stupid button.

I personally dont care how many people are on staff. If the company is a one person band I'd like to know that.
I'd be satisfied with" here is a phone # and I am available 9-5"
Truth is what to look for so you can judge if the price and situation meets your needsneeds

You ask a complex question and there's no real answer. We are myself and 2 part-time support staff. Our servers are in the NAC datacenter. I have an office downtown but have been working out of home mostly these days. If you deal with a smaller hosting provider like ourselves, then you'll get more personal service.

But at the end of the day, you as a client pay to get access to a server that you share with other clients. It doesn't really matter how many staff a host has [I would be worried about those kids running hosting businesses around school though]. What matters is how well the servers run and how responsive and helpful they are to your support requests. :)

yeah really it all depends on the size. Like rackspace probly has lots of staff because they are huge but some others that are not so big my only have a few. Some of these companies only have one staff and yet they still have great support and all.

The number of staff has nothing to do with it. There's lots of companies that have nice offices, lots of staff.. and they go out of business, because they can't afford all this.

The only thing that matters is what you're paying for. uptime, reliability, and quick personal service.

So two guys running a few servers can offer a fantastic service?

Cool..thanks for the help.

Originally posted by mrzippy
The number of staff has nothing to do with it. There's lots of companies that have nice offices, lots of staff.. and they go out of business, because they can't afford all this.

I would have to agree/disagree with you mrzippy. I agree with your statement about the number of staff but I think you missed the point about the amount of staff vs. client base. Meaning a hosting company must grow with it's client base. If you have 100 customers then sure maybe one guy is enough but what if you have 10,000? See my point? All-in-all I think it's wise for a hosting company to have more than just a one-man show for support and other issues, it just makes more sense but then again it's all about your taste as a client if your willing to take that risk.

My 2¢ cents.

i think that with a smaller company (no matter how many staff members they have) you will get alot better support than with a bigger company.

I don't believe the number of staff a company employs should be a determining factor of how good or bad their service is. However, I do believe that there should be an appropriate ratio between staff and clients in order to sustain satisfactory service.

But you don't get the gurantee that their business is going to be around for any significant amount of time.

There are both pros and cons to one man operations and companies w/ a sizable staff. One advantage to the one man operation is that if you are able to form a good relationship with the owner, getting support requests resolved will be much easier than dealing with 'csr #19'.

What is not important is how many staffers there are. What is important is that the staffers they have are knowledgable and quick to respond. This is all you need.

Jared C.
____________
Host-Grid.com

I think you need at least 2 people in a hosting company so that you have at least one for backup. Things happen, people get sick, have family problems, etc.

Isn't Abraham Lincoln reputed to have said something like "a man's legs should be long enough to reach the ground...?"

A host should have as many staff people as they need to service their customers. Maybe that's one, maybe one with a couple of part-timers or on-call people, maybe it's two, maybe it's 50.

Certainly any of us could name some companies with dozens or even over a hundred employees and shady customer service reputations; and we could on the other hand relate horror stories about one-person shops that were just as bad. Conversely, there are both great small companies and great large companies.

Too bad there's no such easy metric... it would make the decisions so much easier!

277

=) . I think word of mouth is the key. Once you get with companies who have like 200 employees but no capital you have a problem. Really just find out what the support turnarounds are and what the uptime is like. I wouldn't host with a company that hasn't been around for less than a year or two.

We have 6 active staff members and a few others that assit when they can. We usually have 1 person contact a client from an instant messanging program so the client can speak to that person when he needs help. Its sort of the relationship mentioned above.