Shockingly good support from a hosting company – worth shouting about

In 1998 I started a (miserably) small online business and it was my first experience choosing a hosting company. At the time, it wasn’t really a big deal because my business was too small to have many hosting needs and in those early times there was less competition among hosting companies. All I was worried about was having enough storage. Traffic wasn’t even a problem. However, I ran into unexpected difficulties and soon learned that even very small businesses have to be concerned with more than just disk space. Support was a detail I hadn’t considered.

That first experience strained me somewhat because I knew it could be like pulling teeth to get support from a company that doesn’t take this aspect of the business seriously. Turns out the company I hosted for the first time was located in someone’s home – a fact not disclosed in the advertisements. The guy was nice enough, and tried really hard to accommodate me as long as support questions came on weekdays between 9am and 5pm, his time. Even then, he didn’t impress me with his level of expertise.

I have since gone through no fewer than six motions, and up until this last motion, none of them were easy to bear. If I remember correctly, the second hosting company I tried had a penchant for going offline several times, and attempts to get support were frustrating. An e-commerce website cannot only be available to customers on occasion. By this time my business had grown somewhat and I had become very sensitive to this aspect. It was a bad experience and I stayed with the company for less than a year.

Next came a well-known hosting company that had some good reviews – although I’m still a little skeptical of the so-called reviews one finds online – and while the initial step went well, I had constant connection issues and, again, had a terrible time getting support. For one thing, there was no phone support at all. Everything had to be submitted via a support ticket. I’ve found this to be a fairly common occurrence, and there is nothing inherently wrong with support tickets, unless they are slow to process and there is no alternative route to support. Also, there was the most obvious language barrier that led me to believe that “support” is located offshore. I’m certainly not a racist, but I think it’s essential for both parties to be able to understand each other for anything constructive to happen. It was ugly.

The next experience was horrible, more than any other, because after a few months of reasonably adequate hosting the company I moved to simply stopped working, with absolutely no warning. This bad word spread across the internet and became a known disaster.

Skip to the most recent forced move. I will say that the host company I have been with for the past 3 years has been a good host. He must not have a name because I have no malice towards him. I had to move because, as an e-commerce site, I have to show that I’m PCI compliant in order to continue accepting credit cards online. This fairly new security measure is one that I applaud, as it goes a long way to giving the buying public the kind of robust and fast security that’s been lacking until now, but since my hosting company was either unable or unwilling to provide a PCI-compliant environment, I had to find a new host. I imagine there are thousands of companies scrambling to find hosting companies that meet this need, which is one of the reasons I wrote this article.

I found TVCnet.com as a result of being referred to them by McAfee Secure, a well-known company that provides security checking and certification to online businesses. They told me that TVCnet.com was one of the very few hosting companies they felt comfortable recommending. When I looked at the available packages offered by this hosting company, I have to say I wasn’t blown away. The packages are rather small, but the prices are also very reasonable. BIG plus was that they clearly positioned themselves as a leader in striving to be and stay PCI compliant for all of their e-commerce customers. I decided to give them a try. My expectations were low until I called the phone number on the TVCnet.com homepage. . . And I got the owner!

Jim Walker not only answered my questions, but he did so with candor, friendliness, and enthusiasm. Not oversold. In fact, he went out of his way to make sure I knew exactly what the company could and couldn’t expect. There was precious little of the latter. I didn’t keep him on the phone, he kept me in touch. He spoke to me for over twenty minutes and wouldn’t hang up until he knew all my questions and concerns had been answered. The result was that I signed up an hour later, via the online process. Still . . . I knew not to expect an easy transition. There was a shopping cart that should work, a Linkpoint portal that should work, and several other site functions, including installing my SSL certificate, which should go well. I crossed my fingers and waited, while Jim and his support team delivered Everything. I didn’t have to upload a single file. My entire site has been migrated from the current host to TVC and every script and application has been handled with care and attention.

Yes, there were problems. My payment gateway to Linkpoint refused to install properly and I fully expected it would take days to fix this. But Jim, himself, kept at it through the weekend without a break until it was finished and working flawlessly. We exchanged dozens of emails (less expensive than phone time and email provides a record of the process that can be saved), and all I had to do was give him access information to various sources where he knew he could find the information he needed.

Jim does not know that I am writing this article. I’m doing this because, quite simply, I’m blown away by the impressive support — no, let’s make this one with Capitol ‘S’ — that TVCnet.com has given me. Others need to know about this company. We hope this article makes the road less bumpy for others who have to find PCI-compliant hosting, and so on anyone with any The kind of website you would like to be hosted by a smart, helpful, and friendly company.