Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Running a Web Hosting Business : Should a host check the clients scripts / softwares

[mpkapadia]

Hello All

I want to ask you all what do you do.
As a hosting provider should you be responsible for your clients programs not working.

We have servlets, jdbc ,mysql hosting packages and one of our clients bought the same.
On our package we put up a pre compiled test servlet to ensure that servlets are working for them.

He accused us that Jdbc was not working on our systems and told us that we were not supporting him, the Jdbc driver was very much installed and should have worked as it was functional on a couple of other sites on the same box. This customer does not listen.

Though we have servlet support we do not do much development on java servlet platform so we were in no position to check their long codes.

Still we woke till late night compiled a test servlet which fetched data from a test sql db using servlets and put up on his site just to prove that it was working fine.

Now he asks how are you doing it?

Does a webhost support these.
What we dont like that he accuses of bad support.

I have noticed something , i suppose many of you will agree.
Your least profitable customers create the most troubles for you. We have some resellers who have as many as 30-40 sites with us and they are just magnific to deal with. They are happy with us

But these ppl are not.

Please give your views. Do you support checking client codes.

Regards
Manish Kapdia

[kunal]

well what you could tell him, is that its the program thats the problem.. not your server.. and he should contact the creator the program...


Your least profitable customers create the most troubles for you.

this is very true

[veggieyogachick]

Hello,

We support the scripts on the server side. So if someone is having a script problem, we do take a look at it to make sure that there's no reason it shouldn't work on the server.

After that, any programming, configuring or coding is up to them. If it's a small CGI script and we know what the answer is right away, of course we'll tell them and/or help them out... and we often make suggestions.

But it's a part of our FAQ that we don't support client's scripts, applets, etc or any other content. Well, we will for $50.00/hour.

Oh and I totally agree with the statement that the least profitable customers are the most problemsome. They seem to expect everything for nothing. sigh....

I also agree with Kunal. If it's nothing obvious to us and it's not a problem on the server, we often tell them they will need to contact whoever the script creator is.

Good Luck!

--roseanne

[DigitalXWeb]

We try to assist the customer with any script problems where possible. Of course this situation of yours you have proven it is not a server problem , so your best bet unless you want to debug the program or script for them I would suggest telling them to contact the author for assistance. It is very hard to offer support for third party scripts and programs besides normal service paths and what not without getting into debugging it which can become a nightmare.

I agree the least profitable usually is the ones who are the typical problem customers. But you have to take the good with the bad and just grin and bare it..

[Jaiem]

You have to make the call on a case-by-case basis.

We support the scripts that come with each plan but generally leave the programming up to the customer. Some tips or insights sure, but direct programming doesn't come with the plan. We can add it or refer them to a webmaster for help but that's an add-on.

[mpkapadia]

Please note that this servlets were developed by them.
Not pre made packages, or off the shelf scripts

Regards
Manish Kapadia