Providing 24×7 Web Hosting Support

When starting your web hosting business you quickly realise that support emails come in at all hours of the day and night. As mentioned previously in starting a web hosting company, clients have various reasons to want to email you at 3am. For those on the other side of the globe, it is the middle of business, for others their web sites provide a living and need to be online 24 hours a day or they loose money. For you as the host, it’s important to realise that you need to have someone online to help users as and when needed. For the startup small company of just 1 person, this might not be physically possible. Luckily there are several alternatives which I want to discuss here starting at the cheapest (hardest way) to the expensive easier route.

Work 24×7 your self

Many start up web hosts have done this. Although I do not recommend this and believe that a number of clients will frown on this fact, it is still one possibility that you might consider. I have heard of startups sleep next to their laptop, have a phone next to their pillow and each and every time an email comes in they drag their eyes open, respond and fall back asleep only to be woken up an hour later. It’s not the most healthy way of living and quickly can destroy the dream of living the high life but it is one way you can meet your clients needs.

Outsource Technical Support

A number of companies such as Bobcares offer technical support for webhosts. This often is a cheaper alternative to hiring more staff and depending on the company you choose, the results can be good. Various plans are offered by outsourcing companies such as flat fee’s, per ticket fee’s, night shift fee’s and more which all can be tailored to suit your needs. Expect to pay a few hundred dollars a month for services like this although if you are a small company then a per ticket fee should create a too large bill.

Outsourcing all sounds good, but it does have it’s problems. You often loose contact with your clients, so you will need to look at the tickets opened and maybe email the clients to ask them how things are so you do not loose that personal touch you had when you were providing support your self.

Get more Staff

The next and last way on the list is to get more staff. There are 24 hours in a day and most people will only want to work 8 hour shifts 5 days a week. How you arrange your staffing needs is personal preference on what works well for you. Things you need to take in to consideration is that staff want a competitive salary, they occasionally get sick and might not be able to work, they are entitled to days off (certainly in the UK) for paid leave and various other situations may arise which are out of your control. With this in mind you may want to have more then 3 members of staff so you always have someone available.

Of course this list is not exhaustive, but it does give a good indication of what to expect and how to reach that 24×7 goal. Of course another alternative is to offer business hours support only based on your location. However, you will need to make that clear for people signing up and you could loose a lot of business putting that restriction in place.