how important is phone support at a host?

[basschick]

i host at a company that doesn't offer phone support. they DO, however, always get on those tickets and emails instantly, and in case their site is down, they have it so the emails get to them through a mirror. when i first started hosting there, i was nervous of having no phone support. on the other hand, i was leaving a terrible host that DID have phone support, so obviously phone support isn't everything. still, i liked the idea of picking up the phone in critical situations.

yet here i am almost 3 years later with great hosting but no phone support. i still wish there was a way to call sometimes, but to tell the truth, not once has it been an issue.

so, what do you think? how important is phone support to you assuming that support is fast by icq, ticket and email?

[Gaystoryman]

Made me go look, but gee, my host doesn't have phone support either, that I could find, though it has ICQ and all that other stuff. Never seemed to have a need to pick up the phone and I have been with them, gee, must be five or more years now.

[MrJD]

icq/aim/msn support would be MUCH better imo. I hate talking on the phone and avoid it at all costs

[Mickey]

to me email and icq is more important than phone..

[gaydemon]

Never had to use it with my host.

I've got a number somewhere which is great, if something really goes wrong its so important you can get hold of someone.

[dzinerbear]

I've never used it, but mine has it.
But honestly, I put in a ticket and within two minutes I'm hearing from them.

Michael

[gaybucks_chip]

Personally, I'd never go with a host that didn't have phone support available at least on an emergency basis. There are also cases where you can spend 15 or 20 minutes explaining something over ICQ or worse, emails, that would take 2 minutes to explain over the phone.

That said, I think I've called NatNet maybe 4 times total vs putting in probably 100+ tickets by now. One of those times was having a 3 way discussion on how to best handle a complex mail routing situation that would have been painful to try and resolve by mail, but NatNet took the initiative to call me and we resolved everything to everyone's satisfaction in about 10 minutes.

Not having that option even open to us would be a big shortcoming.

[abostonboy]

Personally, I'd never go with a host that didn't have phone support available at least on an emergency basis. There are also cases where you can spend 15 or 20 minutes explaining something over ICQ or worse, emails, that would take 2 minutes to explain over the phone.

That said, I think I've called NatNet maybe 4 times total vs putting in probably 100+ tickets by now. One of those times was having a 3 way discussion on how to best handle a complex mail routing situation that would have been painful to try and resolve by mail, but NatNet took the initiative to call me and we resolved everything to everyone's satisfaction in about 10 minutes.

Not having that option even open to us would be a big shortcoming.

I feel the same way. Being able to reach someone 24x7 on the phone is vitally important. Hosting is the absolute most important part of my business.

Like you, I had a couple complex issues come up that I really needed being able to make that phone call. I didn't even know where to begin writing a ticket for it.

[Chubbs]

I host with 4 diff. companies. NatNet being the newest. I never use to think that phone support was needed until my main tgp server went down a couple weeks ago and my host was nowhere to be found. It was down for 7+ hours before I realized it. Their alert system totally failed. After realizing it was down, I sent a support ticket and icq message and both went unanswered for 45 minutes. It was at that point where I realized how important phone support is. And this was a big, well known host.

--Chubbs

[AnthonyDeAngelo]

it seems that there are situations sometimes that are better communicated by voice contact especially when being "walked" through a process