Here at Site5, we’re not very shy about craving feedback from our customers. We thrive on it because that’s how we know where we can improve as a company, where we’re excelling, and what our customers are thinking and needing.
David Carroll of softRealty.com recently submitted an awesome candid review, and we wanted to share it in its entirety.
This is a review about the amazing support and quality of service I’ve received from Site5 as a hosting company. I want to share my experience for others who were in the same boat as me getting started with a hosting reseller plan for the first time.
I own a real estate software company called softRealty.com and we recently had a need to provide hosting for many of our real estate clients. We traditionally host our own application servers across several managed data centers. However, we thought we’d experiment with utilizing a hosting company to help us manage client hosting.
We researched dozens of top rated hosting companies and narrowed our search down to Host Gator, Host Clear, and Site5. We picked these companies because they offered the best reseller pricing arrangements to allow us to provide the lowest costs to our own clients.
On paper, these 3 hosting companies looked almost identical. Host Gator had the most endorsements from other companies and good overall reputation. Host Clear had the best pricing options with more storage/bandwidth for less monthly costs. Site5 was an unknown for us, but had comparable pricing.
For all 3 hosts, I had questions about certain features, support quality, and other things that weren’t clear on their websites. Some hosts had their own custom control panel and it wasn’t clear if that was a good thing or bad thing. I had questions about shared IPs, effort to upgrade to dedicated servers, whether or not mod_rewrite on Apache servers were enabled, and several other questions.
I began researching reviews regarding these companies and found myself more confused. There were a mixture of reviews spanning from amazing to horrible for Host Gator and Host Clear. Site5 had the least number of good / bad reviews in general. However, they had some bad reviews that caused concern for me. Bad reviews for all hosts pointed to poor support, billing issues, and the fine print in terms of service limits.
I truly was at an impasse and decided to test the sales / support of all 3 services. I used the online chat for all three because my expectation of phone support was pretty low. My experience with Host Gator and Host Clear were disappointing. The reps I chatted with were not knowledgeable and answered questions based on scripted responses. They eventually got around to providing some answers. However, I can see where some people had bad support experiences.
I expected much less from Site5. However, to my surprise, I used the Chat link on http://www.site5.com/contact/livechat/ and spoke to very competent people about all the features. The chat was very informative. In fact, the sales person went so far to provide suggestions to specific scenarios I was exploring. I was so impressed with the sales chat, I was ready to purchase my first month. They explained I would also receive my first month free. I didn’t realize this, so the decision to try them out was a no brainer.
Throughout the process of setting up several test accounts and email accounts, I ran into problems with configurations. Every time I need help, the support chat has been phenomenal. Each support person has a picture, first and last name, and a bio. They show tremendous patience, knowledge, and go beyond the call of duty with providing support. For example, I was setting up a WordPress 3.0.1 multisite using subdomain settings. Several support techs were able to log into WordPress and review all settings even though, Site5 does not provide support for 3rd party apps. Over the course of a week, I’ve learned more about reseller hosting, DNS records, email configurations, and so much more from this great staff of support reps.
I cannot say enough good things about Site5. They are professional, knowledgeable, patient, and helpful. I hope this review helps others in their quest to review hosting options.
Best Regards,
David Carroll
www.softRealty.com
Thanks to Site5 for this post! Site5 provides web hosting, reseller hosting, and managed dedicated servers for webmasters, coders, designers, businesses, and creative people!
Customer Spotlight: David Carroll & softRealty.com
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