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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jun 2002
    Location
    San Diego
    Posts
    95

    Where oh where am I to host?

    Hi everyone,

    This is my first post though I have enjoyed reading the posts for some time.

    I am trying to find a new web host. My current one has been very good to me but they are experiencing some growing pains (i.e loss of tech support person, moving to new office, etc.). Also there seems to be one main person running the company and answering tech support and although he is very good he simply cannot afford to spend the time that is needed to adequately give me the support I want.

    I am presently looking at going with www.site5.com but they only have 2 techs on during the day and one at night and this makes me a bit leery of going with them. Though they do seem like an excellent host.

    I was wondering if anyone could recommend a hosting company with upwards of ten or more tech support people on multiple shifts with fanatical customer support.

    I generally know what I am doing but just to give an idea of issues that sometimes require extra tech support my CGI scripts sending commands to my present hosting SMTP server are not returning bounces on emails that are undelivarable. Not through any fault of the scripts from all that I can see or have been told.

    Another email did not arrive to an existing email address but instead of bouncing to the author of the email it bounced to me at another email address.

    I am asking questions that directly relate to problems I am having that are being caused in general through no fault of my own. Yet some of my questions seem to be too bothersome or un-profitable to deal with so I get the feeling that I just have to shut up and accept things as they are.

    Part of the problem is that I do all my own CGI and Perl programming, mySQL administration, and such and my questions are much more complex than the average client's. As such I seem to bump into more of the problems a hosting company might have in their infrastructure than a regular client might.

    I don't mind paying for better support but I am looking for recommendations. I will pay up to $20.00 a month for the support I am looking for. More if even that is too little.

    What I don't want to do is pay more money for the same level of support that I have gotten used to. Which is great normally until I start asking too many tough questions or until the hosting company ends up experiencing growing pains where they can't handle things as well.

    I recently emailed out five emails to the top five hosters I could find. Only two responded. www.site5.com had the most professional and thorough response. In my email I asked the hosting companies to ignore it if their customer support was anything less than exceptional. That doing otherwise would cause us both to end up in a lose/lose situation where I would get frustrated and where they would loose goodwill and reputation through my lack of recommendation.

    Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Dec 2001
    Location
    Los Angeles, CA
    Posts
    1,337
    You are looking to have 10 techs available to you for a shared hosting account?
    Ronny Fang
    Linux Problems Solved. | Built for the Hosting Industry
    Server Management. Node Management. Helpdesk Management.
    ( AcuNett, Est. 15 Years, RateLobby 5 Stars )

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Dec 2001
    Location
    Ponchatoula, LA
    Posts
    497
    I don't think that you can go wrong with Site5. Everyone that I have spoken to that has had experience with them has only had good things to say. I can also highly recommend Ventures Online. I have had them answer support tickets literally in minutes.

    Richard
    Enigma Hosting
    "I wasn't speeding, I was qualifying!"

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jun 2002
    Location
    San Diego
    Posts
    95
    I didn't mean ten techs as in all of them available to me at the same time or anything.

    I meant ten techs all available to handle tech support inquiries. Such that tech support does not rely on mainly one or two. So if one is sick, quits, or is otherwise not available it's no big deal in terms of tech support keeping up with customer service.

    I realize that this level of tech support personnel requires a relatively big hosting company and that's okay. Though perhaps having ten on the payroll might be expecting a bit too much. I don't know.

    Still looking for recommendations.....

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Sep 2000
    Location
    Alberta, Canada
    Posts
    3,146
    Carlos, can I point out that even though Hosters offer various features/services, it does not mean they provide support for all of them. If you rent an office and want to setup an in-house LAN with an Internet connection, would the Building owner be responsible (since they provide electrical and phone outlets) or would you have to contract someone, yourself, and arrange to have it done?

    I am asking questions that directly relate to problems I am having that are being caused in general through no fault of my own.

    Are you sure about that?

    Your example of using a script (Perl, I presume) that does not return invalid Email "is your responsibilty" as you need to know what you are coding. Would you also ask you Hoster why an HTML tag or CSS code, doesn't work? It's all the same. When coding or using a Perl script to return invalid Email, you must use the -F switch -- for Sendmail anyway, not sure what it is for others. That is something one learns when working with Perl. Same as learning HTML or CSS, you practice on your own and see what works.

    Tech Support is for resolving problems with features/services provided with a Hosting account, that are not working. Although it's nice to have Tech Support guide one through some coding errors/problems, it is not a requirement. Now if you are using valid code (maybe you are using the -F switch, I dunno) and your Hoster is not using Sendmail, they should be able to tell you if it is available with the Email program used on the Server. That, would be a more correct usage of Tech Support.


    The general idea of what you ask (good Tech Support) is reasonable. Expecting Tech Support to teach one about how to fix code is not. I have clients asking me why their JavaScript code doesn't work, or why their Perl script doesn't work and most times, they don't know certain basics. It is a fine line, between providing Tech Support and checking the code for anyone saying "their script isn't working right", only to tell them they aren't using correct "syntax" or didn't "chmod" their script properly.

    It sounds like you have more experience, but it still sounds like you want someone to help you when your coding goes wrong. That is why there are numerous Forums for different coding languages and why they are so popular. I would suspect that you might find a Hoster, willing to provide the "type" of Tech Support you require, but you will have to visit and post your request, on many, many, Forums like this one, before you do. In that endevour I wish you the best of luck. You are willing to pay for that level of Support and it will go a long way into helping you find a Hoster that does.
    PotentProducts.com - for all your Hosting needs
    Helping people Host, Create and Maintain their Web Site
    ServerAdmin Services also available

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Feb 2002
    Location
    Australia
    Posts
    24,027
    Originally posted by Website Rob
    <<quoted post above, but removed as you can see it there>>
    Agreed 100%. I am just rewriting our support policy to reflect what we provide as "support" and what we don't. Support techs cost money and margins are tight enough as they are without incurring unneccessary costs. I describe it like, we're a hardware store that sells tools. We don't teach you how to use those tools. If you come in and buy a tool, then it's up to you to learn how to use that tool etc. Maybe that's not the best example, but it's all I can come up with now. I am tired.
    Last edited by Chicken; 06-16-2002 at 11:30 AM.
    WLVPN.com NetProtect owned White Label VPN provider
    Increase your hosting profits by adding VPN to your product line up

  7. #7
    I would have to agree with Carlos and Bob.

    We support a lot of different things but we simply can not support a customers custom scripts. We can tell them where the information they need to run them is at but we can't make them work for them, at least not under our regular support policy.

    We do keep a list of forums available for the techs so that if a customer does ask a question that we don't support we can at least direct then to a resource to find what they need.

    Unfortunately its just not possible to support every customers custom script or code.
    Matt Kelly
    WCiT.net
    Managed and Unmanaged
    Budget VPS, Cloud and Colocation

  8. #8
    How about pap-er-call. Support for scripting, coding, or other client-side issues will be treated as Premium Support issues.

    You could offer Premium Support at an additional cost of either a per call rate, or a fixed rate (olike the electric utilities, wherein the rate is semi-fixed, and changes every few months to reflect trends)

  9. #9
    That is an option but then you need to have a very knowledgable tech for each and every possible language or script that can be run on your servers. That could be a daunting task in inself.
    Matt Kelly
    WCiT.net
    Managed and Unmanaged
    Budget VPS, Cloud and Colocation

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Nov 2001
    Location
    Vancouver
    Posts
    2,422
    First, a positive comment on Site5 - I have hosted a significant revenue producing site at Site5 for over a year, and we are expanding our relationship with them -- that is my real vote of confidence in Site5. Their technical staff are there when I need them, which is rarely.

    Actually I believe you have somewhat unrealistic expectations of hoster support.

    Its a rare technical support person that "knows everything". Their primary responsibilty, at a web hoster, is to ensure that the services they provide are functioning and available for clients to use.

    Supporting custom scripts is different than supporting POP3 email issues. In the latter, mostly well known applications are using well understood POP3 services. The range of potential issues is narrower and one can expect that most techs will be able to deal with most problems they will encounter with POP3 (or some other such service).

    In the former, your custom custom code is exploiting a subset of many thousands of system calls, your own algorithms, and one or more programming languages. I would not expect technical support to be fully capable of dealing with these coding issues. In IT in a large organization, or technical support from a large software vendor, you would expect no more either.

    That is my responsibility. I feel it is my responsibility as a developer to debug the issue to the point where I can conclusively point to a machine configuration issue - if there is one - as the cause and then report to technical support a suggested remedy.

    In your example, I would first be researching known issues with the MTA (sendmail, postfix or whatever it is) and try to determine where the fault actually lies. I generally assume that problems are of my own making, especially when exploiting a well known service that is used by other applications (such as sendmail).

    Fortunately its a rare problem that has not already been experienced by someone (or hundreds of others) before, so the Internet is your best friend. Learning how to query Google effectively is the single best advice I could give anyone.

    In the rare case that the problem is machine configuration, by the time I am ready to contact support, I have gathered all the information required to make them productive.

    I have support experiences with hosting companies that run the gamut, from single person operations to large organizations that run 7 * 24 phone support. One thing is consistant - none of them are equipped (nor should be) to provide developer support through their regular technical support channels. Certainly some firms have technical support staff that are very gifted and can cross the boundaries - but that's a pleasant bonus, not a pre-requisite in my mind.

    In fact in larger firms you are more likely to run into junior support than not, simply because of the scale of their operations and turnover.

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Jun 2002
    Location
    San Diego
    Posts
    95

    Wink

    Hi there,

    First off thanks to everyone's responses. Excellent stuff!

    I just want to comment on something mwatkins said in the last reply....

    In your example, I would first be researching known issues with the MTA (sendmail, postfix or whatever it is) and try to determine where the fault actually lies. I generally assume that problems are of my own making, especially when exploiting a well known service that is used by other applications (such as sendmail).
    I absolutely agree with you 100%. I should generally assume that the problem lies with me somehow. Without question.

    But when a problem does not seem to lie with my code as in code that uses an SMTP server and when an SMTP server is doing some other strange things like bouncing an email to me that was addressed to a proper address as though it was undeliverable then I think hosting tech support should at least be willing to comment on the problem though for sure I don't expect them to sit there on a $10.00 a month plan and go through my code line by line.

    A good comment might be something like "Sorry you are experiencing a problem here. As far as we can tell there is no problem with our SMTP server handling requests. It would help us a great deal if you would use the usenet groups or otherwise to narrow the problem down and then get back to us if you feel that the problem still lies with our SMTP server setup."

    The issue could still be all mine or not unusual for how SMTP works in certain cases. For example the email that was undeliverable to me was from Chile and had Spanish accent characters that apparently messed up qmail's delivery of it. As to why it bounced to me and not the original sender ... it might have something to do with that too.

    Some others have commented that hosting is like buying tools at a hardware store where the store does not agree to teach you how to use them. Agreed .... in one sense.

    But if you are fairly proficient in using a tool (or at least think that you are ) and it doesn't seem to be working right then I would think that a great hardware store would willingly listen to the explanation of the problem and tactfully help the customer to see that at least the problem lies with thei knowledge of how to use the tool rather than the tool itself if that is indeed the case. Perhaps the tool is also not working right. A customer should be able to have confidence that if something is screwy with the tool the store will make it right. Does this not make sense?

    In the same way that this applies to buying a tool at a hardware store I personally believe it should apply to buying hosting services.

    Just my opinion of course.

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Jun 2002
    Location
    San Diego
    Posts
    95

    Wink

    Hi there,

    Just wanted to let everyone know that I chose to start an account with www.site5.com and to share my first impressions.

    First THE PROS:

    I started their Mercury account at 10.95 for one month.

    I will most likely switch to their slightly more expensive account after a month if I am still pleased with them since I am just testing them out.

    Here are my impressions so far.

    Their customer service has been nothing less than ABSOLUTELY OUTSTANDING! I sent out emails to the top 6 hosts - based on reviews, forum posts, etc. - that I could find. My email was pretty demanding in terms of asking pointed questions.

    Only three responded. One respectfully declined to host me (I think in part because I commented on the possibility that they might be loosing business with a link to pages with suggestive photographs of lightly clad women on their hosting web site). Another one beat around the bush in response to some of my questions. Especially about whether they oversold their hard disk space.

    Only ONE responded in a fully satisfying way. Site5! Their response was unreal not only in the quality but in it's depth. I have frankly never gotten such a thorough email responding to pre-sales inquiries. And I had something like 12 questions in that first email!

    After starting an account with them such responses have continued. Not only from the tech who originally responded to me but from another tech as well. They have made me feel comfortable asking questions, have even joked with me a bit, have made me feel that we are developing a good working relationship, and have otherwise been a joy to deal with.

    They also allow a great deal of self-configuration through their control panel which is GREAT!

    Now the CONS (and I hope if you are reading this site5 that you will not take this personally - I really love the hosting so far)

    The only con that I can see so far is their web site at www.site5.com. Which I believe does not do them justice. It loads slower than many (probably due to heavy graphics) which initially gave the impression that their service might be slow (not the case).

    Some parts of their web site are a bit of a pain to use. For example their control panel pages only appear after you traverse to the bottom of a screen that at first shows nothing but the name of their custom made control panel.

    Their site is a bit unintuitive to use. For example I saw a FAQ that I wanted to comment on to them but after going elsewhere on the site I had a hard time finding it again.

    Their FAQ (or one version of it - since they might have been working on it at the time and uploading changes to it) is a bit clunky. In the sense that you have to click through various pages before you see anything. Some of the FAQ categories are empty. And even them there does not seem to be much under the other ones.

    Some text on their site (I believe in the FAQ) areas overlaps the bounderies of the page (at least in Opera). I checked some of the other things through Internet Explorer but not this one so it might just be non-standard HTML being used underneath.

    Overall I am VERY, VERY satisfied so far and VERY excited to have started an account there though I am tempering my excitement with a measure of realism and waiting to see how their hosting turns out in the next 30 days. Using the static IP assigned to me to test my site at site5 thoroughly before switching away from my current one.

    Just my two cents worth . Best regards to everyone.

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