Support is very important when something goes wrong or if you need help with something regarding your web hosting account. Unfortunately, many free web hosting providers offers little or no support to their customers. Here are some features that can be used as indicators of web hosting providers support.
- User Forums with active employee moderation
- Live Support, either via phone of Live Chat
User Forums
Some free web hosting providers offer a forum where all aspect of their services and other webmaster issues are discussed. This is generally a great place to get in contact with other customers, and get help from fellow customers and employees of the web hosting company.
However, many free web hosting providers lack the financial or staff support to run a useful forum. In order for a forum to be useful, a web host will need to have one or more employee who frequently moderate, reads and posts in the forum. So, if you are looking for a web hosting company who takes their customers and support seriously, check their forum to see if there are any signs of active employees.
Live Support
Sometimes you need immediate help and support. A phone call is a good solution. However, not many free web hosting providers offer phone support as it adds to their operation costs. The other solution to live support is chat. All you need is simply Internet access and a web-browser.
A good test is to send an email to a free web hosting provider asking questions regarding their services. Good answer to your questions is an indication of good support to their customers, and it's a bad sign if they do not reply to emails from potential customers. Also, check their response time. If they advertise a response time of 48 hours but you don't get any word back from them for a week, that's a bad sign, too.