It’s been about two weeks since I moved hosting companies and I must say it was one of the best moves I ever made.
I’ve been hosting domains as a reseller and for personal use for about 4 years and although I’ve never really understood all the mumbo jumbo involved with DNS, the datbases and pinging and so forth, I was confident that my hard earn dollars would provide me with the support necessary to use the services.
I decided to go with a Canadian company so I chose webserve. Not having anything to
compare it to, I was content with the service. Questions were usually answered via live chat and downtime was minimal. In 4 years I might have had my sites go down 5 times and never more than a few hours. This fall things changed. My server was constantly going down and worst of all support was non-existent. I spent hours trying to get a hold of anyone who could at least provide me with some comfort let alone a fix. It’s a helpless feeling when others are calling you about something you’re responsible for but can do nothing about it. The only responses were canned email responders and customer service people who assured me someone would call me back. They never did. At one point I was told that the company was growing so fast they couldn’t keep up with everything, to which I responded, “not for long.” The only thing holding me back was the thought of moving. With some helpful tips and encouragement I did what I had to do.
Every once in a while Steve Dembo gets the urge to sing the praises of his hosting company. He’s definitely a fan boy of bluehost. A few inquiries on twitter confirmed his ethusiasm. That was it. I’d bite the bullet and start the move. It took me a few days to download and backup all my stuff and there were a few minor glitches but my experience with them has been nothing but positive. Not only did they have they provided me with fast, responsive service both on the phone and via chat, but have gone above and beyond their duty. Technically, they are not really supposed to help out with third party applications like WordPress but they walked me through every question and in fact modified code to make things just work. They were pleasant, patient and knowledgeable. I’ve now added a little affliate link to my sidebar. I don’t have any ads on my site and I don’t see this as much as an ad but a recommendation for other like me, who need some guidance.
All this reminded me of the story in Good to Great where the Neiman Marcus employee accepts a return of a shirt purchased at another store and goes so far above any normal standard of customer service that they gain a customer for life.
Price becomes such a small factor when service is exceptionally bad or good.
Image: Error establishing a database connection
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I’m glad I read this… The hosting account that I’m using for my blog is the absolute worst. I’ll be checking it out immediately. Thanks!
Thrilled to hear about the move! And glad to hear that you’ve had a similar experience to my own experiences with them so far. I don’t think you’ll wind up regretting the decision. You’ve hit the nail right on the head with that Neiman Marcus story. Bluehost’s support have truly gone above and beyond whenever I’ve had any sort of trouble. Quite simply, even when they’ve had an easy reason to, they’ve never passed the buck.
Curious to hear more about your experiences as a reseller though, I really don’t know much about that sort of stuff.
Steve Dembos last blog post..Day 25: Add a quick 1000 words to your posts
Steve,
The reseller thing was overkill. I really didn’t understand what it was. I assumed that since I was managing various sites, I needed this. A colleague of mine has a reseller account where he gives clients cpanel access, I’ve never needed to do that so really reseller accounts wasn’t necessary.
I paid $500 a year for a 10 pack reseller account. I was managed 8 sites. I’ve moved them all to bluehost and for $90. That really wasn’t the reason I moved, just an added bonus. As I said, price isn’t that important if the service is good. I would have stayed had they delivered even competent service.
Dean, great post!
I recently returned an HD flip camera because the tech rep told me “even my mother knows it doesn’t come with a memory card.” LOL – and true – I had no clue memory cards weren’t a part of the package b/c I need had to buy one myself, so my point is that it’s dangerous to be presumptuous. Or better yet, I better stop buying cameras 🙂
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Im not really into this, but I have to say I find your post intersting thanks very much.
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