Do the website hosting providers you're considering offer exceptional customer service?

If you’re a newbie researching website hosting providers, you may be baffled by questions like:

"How do I upload my website?"

"How do I link my web page to my own PDF file?"

You need someone patient, friendly, and able to translate computerese into something you can understand.

I’ve been very happy with the customer service at Banana Hosting. Questions are answered within a few hours, often sooner. You can prioritize your question as normal, low, or high priority. All tickets are answered by Banana Hosting owner Johnny Kattouf, so you don’t have to worry about getting a random customer support person who may not have the right answers for you.

If you feel strongly you need 24/7 service, Host Gator offers live chat 24/7, as well as telephone and email support. I tried their live chat last week. It took just a few seconds to get Shaun on the chat. Altogether it took four minutes to have the whole conversation.

Kattouf feels that “24-hour support is overrated and not an issue for real scenarios.” I have to agree. He adds “"Sometimes if it's urgent, like a server is down, we have technicians 24/7 at the network center who will take care of it anytime of the day."