Have you ever found yourself stuck in the middle of a crucial project due to a hosting issue and waiting endlessly for a customer support response? You are not alone…
All hosts promise “best in the industry” support, but only a few do it right. Good customer support is expensive, and the results often aren’t visible immediately, so a lot of web hosts skimp on this. Here are the three best web hosting providers with the best customer support.
Table of Contents:
I’ve picked the following web hosting providers based on the following criteria:
- 24-hour round the clock customer support
- Short ticketing response times
- Phone support staffed by locals
- Solid technical expertise
1: NameHero
I recently switched from SiteGround to NameHero, so I have personal experience with their customer support. I’ve opened several tickets with them related to my VPS configuration, and I’ve always received prompt responses. Here’s a screenshot of all the tickets I’ve opened with them:
In one instance, they called in the Softaculous team to take a look at a wonky configuration issue. When I woke up the next day, it was fixed.
The CEO Gets Personally Involved
The CEO Ryan Gray gets personally involved in NameHero customer support issues, and you can freely dialogue with him over at the NameHero blog, or Twitter. He’s helped me with a few complex issues relating to my hosting configuration and has taken my feedback on all of them.
In all, I highly recommend NameHero for their customer service. I’ve had nothing but great experiences with them.
Live Chat, Tickets, or Calls
You can contact NameHero support via any of these three channels. If you choose to open a ticket, you can specify the severity of your issue – for casual questions, I chose the “low” priority, but on a few occasions, I had to open high-priority ones. At each stage of the ticketing process, you can see the progress, and whether or not someone’s currently working on it. It gives you a sense of progression, which is very comforting.
Here is the NameHero coupon page where you can get their latest discounts, and here’s a complete NameHero review with all their features and comparisons with other hosting providers.
2: RoseHosting
RoseHosting was the first VPS provider in the country, and that is what they specialize in. Here’s the RoseHosting coupon list.
US Based Support
Unlike SiteGround, RoseHosting doesn’t have servers all over the world. As a result, they’ve managed to keep all their support staff within the United States. No outsourcing and that’s a plus point for me.
24×7 Live Chat
This is particularly impressive considering that their staff is located in the US. It means they’re reachable at all times of the day and are not skimping on costs.
5-Minute Ticket Response Time
RoseHosting’s statistics of less than the 5-minute response time for tickets are very impressive. Given that their support is US-based, it’s all the more impressive.
Support with Root Access to VPS Servers
Unlike SiteGround, which doesn’t provide root access to its servers on the GoGeek plan, RoseHosting’s managed VPS solutions, give the user complete control, including root access. This means that their support staff has to deal with more complex problems, as it’s easy to mess things up.
No Overselling
Right from 2001, RoseHosting was the first to introduce virtual Linux servers. At that time, they promised to not have more than 15 virtual servers on a single machine. And they’ve maintained that focus on keeping low-density servers even today. It’s one of their major selling points.
#3: Liquid Web
Liquid Web got rid of its shared packages entirely. Now they only focus on high-end hosting, with managed WordPress, WooCommerce, VPS, and cloud services.
Here’s the Liquid Web coupon page.
10x Compensation for Downtime
Liquid Web is unique amongst hosting providers, in that its SLA gives a lot more compensation for downtime on their servers compared to anyone else. 10 times to be precise!
Also, they promise 100% uptime – not 99, or 99.99%. Given that their hosting is much more expensive than regular providers, it’s a very solid guarantee of uptime and support.
24/7 Live Support
Given Liquid Web’s premium prices, it would be surprising if they didn’t have top-of-the-line, round-the-clock support. This includes chat, phone, and ticketing.
Level 3 Technical Support
Technical support in the web hosting world is divided into three tiers:
- Tier 1 – Basic troubleshooting
- Tier 2 – Basic technical support
- Tier 3 – Advanced, and in-depth technical support
Liquid Web’s support staff are tier 3. This means that you always get the most knowledgeable individuals to help you out with your problems. No more getting asked to check whether or not the router is switched on!
Tier 3 tech support is expensive and forms the basis for Liquid Web’s high prices. And when you take into consideration their 24/7 availability, it makes it all the more impressive.
However, none of these web hosts provide the cheapest services. Why?
Because the truth is that…
Good Hosting Support Isn’t Cheap
After a certain point, the most expensive part of web hosting isn’t the servers or the quality of the hardware. It’s not the technology or colocation costs. It’s the support. The human element. It’s something that scales linearly with your business, unlike technology which can handle things at scale without linear costs.
Many web hosts skimp on quality customer service because it’s expensive
Hosting providers try and save money by doing the following:
- Outsourcing their support
- Not having live support options (chat, e-mail)
- Having live support only during office hours
- Having low-qualified support staff
The problem is that these issues aren’t immediately visible when you first purchase web hosting. They become apparent only after you’ve been using the service for a while. And by then it’s often too late!
Components of Quality Customer Support
High-end web hosting support can be distilled to include some or all of the following:
24×7 Availability – Live Chat or Phone Support
There are two options for live support:
- Chat
- Phone support
Some providers like DreamHost provide chat, but no phone support. Some like GoDaddy over live chat, but it’s often unavailable like this:
Many providers have specific times at which you can obtain live support via phone or chat. This is not surprising, since it costs a lot to have support outside office hours, during downtime. And since a lot of web hosts don’t have international customers, they view it as a waste of time to have support outside regular working hours.
The best hosting support companies, however, will have 24/7 live support with either chat or e-mail.
Ticketing Systems with Short Response Time Guarantees
Not all issues can be resolved quickly over chat or the phone. Sometimes, a more serious issue crops up, that requires detailed investigation. A ticketing system with a tracking number is necessary for these situations.
A good web host with solid hosting support will guarantee short ticketing response times. Many hosts have long windows for responses. For example, DreamHost has a response time of 24 hrs:
That’s quite a long time to wait! Of course, you’ll often receive a response in less than the promised time. But providing a guarantee is important. Hosts with excellent customer service will guarantee quick response times for tickets.
Liquid Web is particularly noteworthy here since they have a compensation system for tickets that exceed the response time. See below for more.
Local Support
Many web hosts are realizing the importance of having support representatives that speak the same language, with the same accents as their customers. However, this costs a lot more when the customers are US-based, due to the obvious differences in wages.
Phone based local support and accents are important
The difference in speaking can even come across in live chat. Call centers try and train their employees to mimic the accents and phrases of customers abroad, but it rarely works. You can always make out that the person at the other end isn’t a native speaker. So excellent hosting support ensures that customer service is provided by native speakers in the same language that the customers use.
I’ve had great experiences with technical staff, particularly over live chat or ticketing systems from people working in another country. This is a great plus point of text-based communication, where you don’t get distracted by things like accents.
Highly Qualified Support Staff
Having customer reps with a decent knowledge of web hosting and the various applications that run on them is expensive.
Often, low-quality support staff will try and fob you off with run-of-the-mill “useless” suggestions like:
Access to Tier-3 support is crucial. Sometimes nothing else will do
- Clear your cookies
- Check your Internet connection
- Restart your router
These non-suggestions are the equivalent of a computer support guy from BestBuy telling you to reboot your computer. And if they can’t resolve the issue, they’ll shift the responsibility to the “real” tech support guys who take time to get back to you, and to whom you don’t speak directly.
Top-quality support doesn’t do this. The ticketing systems, phone, and chat lines are manned by people who know their stuff. People who know how to type commands into a terminal. People who know about WordPress, PHP, plugins, SSL, and other server internals. Not glorified receptionists.
No Overselling
If a web host oversells its servers, you can be sure of trouble. It means their plans are extremely cheap, and they make up in volume, that which they lack in margins. Most hosts are not transparent about overselling.
This means their support lines will be overburdened. And not just because there are lots of customers. The support staff will be facing constant complaints of slow speeds, and other problems that arise from overselling.
RoseHosting stands out in this regard. They’ve always placed a premium on low-density VPS servers, ever since 2001 – see below for more.
Why I Don’t Include SiteGround in the List
While it has excellent customer support, I no longer recommend SiteGround. It’s become way too expensive for the service it provides, and they also tried to take down my GoGeek review. In addition, they no longer offer cPanel and instead rely on a custom interface that requires long-time cPanel users to get used to a new workflow. For these reasons, I don’t include SiteGround in the above list.
Conclusion
Other web hosts provide excellent customer service. But not many of them can deliver round-the-clock live service, that’s locally based and qualified. These three web hosts are the best in their class, based on my judgment. I’ll update this list if I find another web host that satisfies my criteria.
What about your experiences with web hosting support? Let me know in the comments below.
