What kind of support Does the Web hosting Provider offer?

Whether your website is down or you can’t fi gure out how to add a new e-mail account, how easily can you get support from a web hosting provider? There are fi ve key types of support to look for:

Direct support—Whether by phone, live chat, or even e-mail (as long as they get back to you within minutes), this is your ultimate form of tech support because it allows you to pinpoint your exact problem and hopefully reach a resolution quickly. At the very least, you’ll want direct support from 9 a.m.–5 p.m. in your time zone, but 24/7 is always best.

Video tutorials—Being able to see how to do something is the next best thing to being walked through the process in person, but these do tend to cover general topics only.

Contextual help screens—Instead of reaching a general help page, clicking these help butt ons gives you information based on where you are or what you’re doing. Look for good detailed information, though, not a two-line description that’s thoroughly useless.


Knowledge base —A comprehensive, well-writt en set of articles covering all aspects of the server’s features is important, especially one that includes troubleshooting articles. Some knowledge bases will ask you if the problem was solved by the articles you just read; if not, it will offer other suggested articles.

User forum —In a sense this is an extension of the knowledge base because it features real-world troubleshooting and often contains information that hasn’t made it into the general knowledge base because it’s very specific. User forums can be particularly helpful for keeping up with very immediate issues and for
spott ing recurring issues. But a user forum is highly dependent on the quality of the users. There’s nothing worse than someone reporting the exact problem you have, posting “it’s been solved,” and not telling anyone how it was solved. Oft en there’s a forum section in which the hosting company posts the latest information
about its servers; how proactive are they in lett ing users know of potential issues?