We've all heard the sales pitches about the "Fail-Proof" web hosting companies who have never had any down time in several years. We all know it's nothing but hype to get you to switch over to their services. Then, there's the misleading info, "Unlimited Hits" which is Not the same as unlimited bandwidth, or thousands of megs of storage space, when the average website only requires about 3 megs of space. "Free" domains, but you must sign your life away with their hosting plan to get it. The worst of all might be 24/7 tech support, which ends up being an answering service.
I believe in divulging the truth, the good and the bad, because some bad things will happen in any business. As a matter of fact, this page will tell you whenever technical problems occur, and I'll even tell you when customers leave! Why am I doing this? I believe that if I am upfront and honest, you will have confidence knowing that I am for real and not just another design firm throwing hype at you to get your business.
First off, I do NOT claim to provide 24/7 tech support, but I do respond personally during business hours and take care of requests very quickly and thoroughly. The data centre is staffed 24/7 and they constantly monitor the entire network. That's better tech support than most hosting companies provide, they generally hire call-takers to forward problems on to the actual techical staff.
So here is a list of customer tech support issues, followed by a list of customers who decided to discontinue doing business with me.
| DATE: |
PROBLEM: |
SOLUTION: |
| May 3, 2007 |
Client could not receive email |
Contacted Tier 1 technicians at data centre, a problem was discovered and remedied, mail began to arrive in client's mail account. |
| Apr 24, 2007 |
Client could not receive email |
Contacted Tier 1 technicians at data centre, partition on mail server was set wrong, problem corrected within 15 minutes and mail began to arrive in client's mail account. |
| Dec 24, 2006 |
Outlook would not communicate with mail server. |
Contacted Tier 1 technicians at data centre, they suggested I have my client change their outgoing server port to 587, as it appeared that their access provider was blocking communication to any mail server other than their own. (This was not a problem with our system, it was a problem with the client's own computer) |