Last month I went undercover and did a survey of 28 different hosting companies and their live chat support.
For this experiment, I visited websites of those companies and asked for live chat support and recorded my experience in a spreadsheet.
Quantitative elements I tracked include:
- Number of attempts to connect
- Average wait time
- Whether he was satisfied with the experience
- Additional notes and remarks
For hosting support – I prefer live chats over phone calls because:
- It’s easier to communicate using live chat system compare to phone calls as we (usually) speak in different accents
- It’s a lot more to discuss technical issues using charts, images, screen casts, and words.
Partial Results
Here are the results I got with some of the hosting companies. For full details, please check out the original post at WHSR.
| Web Host | Attempts | Avg. Wait Time | Satisfied? | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AltusHost | 2 | 13 sec | Yes | Very quick response, my questions were answered professionally. Very good experience overall. |
| BlueHost | 1 | 2 min 2 sec | Yes | Reasonable response time, questions answered professionally. Good experience overall. |
| Crucial Paradigm | 1 | – | – | Live chat support not provided. |
| HostGator | 4 | 4 min | Yes | Response time was much quicker when I signed into my HostGator account. Very good experience overall. |
| InMotion Hosting | 6 | 40 sec | Very | Very quick response. We were having some technical issues with our private SSL certificate last month (June 2017) and I spoke to InMotion Hosting support multiple times. The support staffs were always ready to help and very efficient. Excellent experience overall. |
| Interserver | 1 | 13 sec | Yes | Very quick response, my questions were answered professionally. Very good experience overall. |
| iPage | 1 | 1 min 10 sec | Yes | Very quick response, my questions were answered professionally. Very good experience overall. |
| One.com | 1 | 5 min 40 sec | Yes | Took a while to get a response, but their support staff was very friendly and helpful. Good experience overall. |
| SiteGround | 1 | 30 sec | Very | Very quick response, my questions were answered professionally. Awesome chat support system (see screenshots below) and very helpful support staff. Excellent experience overall. |