High quality technical support from your ISP is something you want to have and not need – rather than need and not have – as downtime means a loss of revenue. There are a number of things you should ask before choosing an ISP.High quality technical support from your ISP is something you want to have and not need – rather than need and not have – as downtime means a loss of revenue. There are a number of things you should ask before choosing an ISP.

Is Your ISP Broad or Narrow?
ISP’s that specialize in a broad range of services, especially ones that service consumers and businesses, will tend to have its support staff spread thin or will have “tiered” support. Ones that specialize in web hosting will generally only have tech support that is versed in hosting related issues. ISP’s that support consumer dialup connections will staff their phone support with people who are good at managing consumers who are still confused by right and left clicking.

If your ISP has a broad service offering, ask them how you get in touch with individuals who can personally act on hosting-related issues. The good ones will have separate staff to support business-related issues such as web hosting. You should find out if you have a personal contact or if you have to call the support queue.

Web Interfaces
Generally the more amount of control you have over your domain the better. This is best done through web pages set up by your ISP. Here’s a list of things you might want to ask if you can mange yourself:

Addition/removal of email addresses
Addition/removal of email forwarders
Report generation of bandwidth usage and other things (and update interval)
Additions of hostnames (the "www" portion of your domain is a "hostname")
Modification of account configuration (class of service, buy more bandwidth)

24-hour Support, But How About From 1am-8am?

Ask questions about what level of support is provided during those hours, and what sort of staff is around. You’re looking for people like System Administrators and network technicians; people who know (or built) the network and the systems. In many cases they will have someone on pager or cell duty, and generally they will be responsive, but there is a risk they may not act immediately.

Access to the Raw Web Log Files
You may want to ask your ISP if you will be able to get easy access to the raw logs produced by the webserver. Generally most ISPs are very good about this, but it’s worth asking the question. Having access to the files themselves lets you run analysis on them from external programs like WebTrends or HitList. These programs let you produce customized, in-depth reports on your web traffic and will even produce automated reports on a schedule so you always have current statistics.

Ensuring quality technical support is an important step to take when getting online. Be sure not to oversee this important decision when choosing an Internet service provider.

Reader Comments on this Article:

Comment by:Summary:
StephenRight On!