Outsourced Support Companies Ranked
written by Nick Holden
Introduction
In the competitive web hosting industry, companies are always searching for ways to provide the best services while keeping overhead costs low. Outsourced support companies are allowing hosts to do this, and outsourcing seems to be becoming increasingly more popular than hiring an in-house support staff. However, many hosts find that the companies they outsource their support to do not provide the quality support that they are looking for, and so their clients suffer. This is why researching an outsourced support company before purchasing their services is vital, but it can be a long and tedious process.
This article is the results of researching six different outsourced support companies.
How the search was conducted
An identical email was sent out to six outsourced support companies, at the same time, from the same email address. The email was as follows:
To whom it may concern:
Hello. I am interested in purchasing services from your company. I am
renting a small dedicated server from a Texas based datacenter. I run
a small business which hosts about 150 domains. We get a few support
tickets per day. Please answer the following questions:
1. What is the most cost effective service that your company can offer
to me for full 24-hour support to my clients?
2. Where are your support techs based out of?
3. What control panels, operating systems, and support ticket systems
do your techs have experience with?
Your immediate response would be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much.
Then once the responses came in, they were ranked based on how fast the company responded, and the quality of the response (includes spelling/grammar and how well the questions were answered). The price ranking was determined by finding the "By Domain" or "By Server" plan which would best represent the average 150-domain host. A search was conducted on WebHostingTalk.com to find customer testimonials and the community’s general thoughts about these companies. The overall ranking was then found by averaging all of the categories together.
The results
Touch Support, LLC ( contact ) |
|---|
| Response Time: 3rd |
| Quality of Response: Best |
| Price: Best |
| Customer Testimonials: Best |
| Overall : Best |
Touch Support LLC’s email response:
Thank you for your inquiry.
To answer your questions:
1. What is the most cost effective service that your company can offer to me for full 24-hour support to my clients?
Our Per Domain plan offers 24/7 unlimited ticket support, for $59.95,
for up to 75 domains. Additional domains can be purchased for 79 cents each, in blocks of 25. A total for the 150 domains you described would be $119.20/mo.
2. Where are your support techs based out of?
Touch Support is located in Lafayette, IN. We are just across the river from Purdue University, where many of our technicians are now or have been students. Our technical staff is comprised entirely of individuals who have shown high levels of technical expertise and an aggressive ability to learn and think in a problem solving fashion.
3. What control panels, operating systems, and support ticket systems
do your techs have experience with?
Our technicians are experienced with cPanel and Plesk control panels,
RedHat Linux and Free BSD operating systems, and we use the eSupport ticket system. The Per Domain plan comes with an unlimited eSupport license.
Your business’s success and Touch Support’s become singular in our
relationship.
Please advise if I may answer any further questions.
If you do not have further questions, you can purchase the Per Domain plan online at:
https://touchsupport.com/modernbill/order/
Regards,
Grady Richards
Director of Sales Touch Support, LLC
Toll Free: 1-888-458-6824
http://www.touchsupport.com
Featured Customer Testimonial for Touch Support LLC:
For 24/7 live outsourced support, look nowhere but TouchSupport. They’re the best and worth every penny.
(blueface, link )
LogicSupport.com ( contact ) |
|---|
| Response Time: Best |
| Quality of Response: 4th |
| Price: 2nd |
| Customer Testimonials: 3rd |
| Overall : 2nd |
LogicSupport.com’s email response:
Hello,
Thank you for contacting us. In answer to your questions:
1) We are currently offering "Per Server" and "Dedicated Admin" support. Here are the details:
- http://logicsupport.com/plans/index.php?page=server
- http://logicsupport.com/plans/index.php?page=dedicated
2) Based out of India. Further details at:
- http://logicsupport.com/about/index.php?page=company
3) Our expertise:
- http://logicsupport.com/about/index.php?page=expert
Have a good day.
Sincerely,
Nathan Murray
LogicSupport.com
Thank you,
LogicSupport.com
Featured Customer Testimonial for LogicSupport.com:
About four months ago we found another company called logicsupport.com. We had actually been using this company for about a year as they were handling support for one of our reseller’s accounts that we use to have through another company. The techs from logicsupport were doing such a great job in answering our questions for our reseller account that we decided to hire them for our support desk and to manage our servers.
(CyberLand, link )
Act Support ( contact ) |
|---|
| Response Time: 2nd |
| Quality of Response: Worst |
| Price: Worst |
| Customer Testimonials: 2nd |
| Overall : 3rd |
Act Support’s email response:
Hi,
Thanks for your interest in our services.
With respect to yoiur queries in your previous email, following are the clairfications.
1. What is the most cost effective service that your company can offer to me for full 24-hour support to my clients?
>>>> We offer support services starting from basic ticket support, live chat support, phone support which cover presales, after sales support, billing and technical support ranging from basic issues to advanced server administrations, server hardnening, server setup, server audit etc.
2. Where are your support techs based out of?
>>>> Our corporate office is located at TExas, USA and our support center is located in India.
3. What control panels, operating systems, and support ticket systems do your techs have experience with?
>>>> We are experienced working with almost all the control panels. We have individual, dedicated team to handle both Linux and Windows (letest versions) OS. WIth respect to the help desk, we have the expertice working in all most all the wel known help desks.
Please get back to us for further clarifications
Thanks
Sales Team
ACTSupport.
Featured Customer Testimonial for Act Support:
Try actsupport.com. Their response time is 30 minutes and they offer scalable plans. I use their service for my dedicated server support & it is quite impressive.
(sageinsane, link )
RootSupport ( contact ) |
|---|
| Response Time: 4th |
| Quality of Response: 3rd |
| Price: 5th |
| Customer Testimonials: 5th |
| Overall : 4th (tied) |
RootSupport’s email response:
Hi
Thanks for contacting Rootsupport, I have given answers to your questions below.
1. What is the most cost effective service that your company can offer
to me for full 24-hour support to my clients?
– The most cost effective service will be our Shared plan for your company, Coverage for Support will be 24×7x365 days non-stop. Here is the URL http://rootsupport.com/shared-plan.php , You can check the services provided with our Shared plan. Pricing is $250 Per server monthly.
2. Where are your support techs based out of?
– Our support techs are based in India.
3. What control panels, operating systems, and support ticket systems
do your techs have experience with?
– Our Techs are well experienced in CPanel, Ensim, Plesk, Hsphere , Helm control panels both on Linux and Windows platform.
Thanks again, please let me know if you still have any questions. I will be glad to assist you.
Sincerely,
Ashish
Sales Co-ordinator,
URL : http://www.rootsupport.com
Geeks Softwares Pvt Ltd.
For further queries please contact us at sales@rootsupport.com
Featured Customer Testimonial for RootSupport:
Courtesy is critical and rootsupport.com does a good job for what we pay them.
(bigd, link )
Tripod Support ( contact ) |
|---|
| Response Time: Worst |
| Quality of Response: 2nd |
| Price: 3rd |
| Customer Testimonials: Worst |
| Overall : 4th (tied) |
Tripod Support’s email response:
Hi:
I’d like to apologize for my delayed response to your inquiry. The most
cost effective solution would be the "per-server" pricing as mentioned
on our Pricing page located at:
http://www.tripodsupport.com/pricing.php
Since you have around 150 domains, the total would be around $195/month
to have both live chat and helpdesk support covered. Unlike other
support companies, we are quite selective about who we work with since
quality manpower is hard to find these days. Since our team is
seasoned, we work with the companies that consider our relation more of
a partnership.
My support techs are based in Calcutta, India – and, as a matter of
fact, I’m located right here with them (even though I’m an
American-born-and-raised person).
We are most confident with Plesk on Linux/Windows and cPanel on Linux.
We work with a variety of helpdesks so that wouldn’t be a problem at all.
If you have any other questions, please let me know!
Regards,
Roj
Operations Manager
Featured Customer Testimonial for Tripod Support:
i used to use Tripodsupport for my Outsource support just for a month back in the summer of this year they were ok not bad….only thing is that once or a few times when a customer of mine submitted a support ticket the response from them was a direct link to another webhosting company FAQ which was pretty lame..
(saj, link )
BobCares ( contact ) |
|---|
| Response Time: 5th |
| Quality of Response: 5th |
| Price: 4th |
| Customer Testimonials: 4th |
| Overall : Worst |
BobCares’s email response:
Hello,
We are very thank full to you for choosing our service for your support.
I have the following suggestions to meet your following requirements.
a. The most cost effective service that our company can offer you is the
"Per Server Plan" or " Per Ticket Plan". Because in "Per Server Plan"
you have to pay only $200 per server and the support provided by us is
unlimited. And we also provide our support to maximum 500 domains/servers
too.
b. In "Per Ticket Plan" $140 for a slab of 50 Tickets Per Server. $2 per extra
ticket (for slabs of 50 extra tickets). And support a maximum of 500
domains/servers.
We are operating from Cochin in India and Concord, New hamshire. Our techs
are experts in LINUX,FREEBSD and Windows . We handle tickets through any
ticketing system.
Operating System we support are:
RedHat Linux, Fedora, Debian, SUSE, Slackware, Gentoo, FreeBSD, OpenBSD,
NetBSD, Solaris , MS Windows
Control panel software we support are:
WHM and cPanel, Ikonware, Plesk, Ensim, Hsphere, Alabanza, Cobalt RAQ, Webmin,
and Servers without control panel.
Is there anything else I can help you with? Thank you for contacting us and
have a nice day 
–
Regards
Noble Joshy
Member, Executive Team
Bobcares.
Featured testimonial for BobCares:
Bobcares.com is in fact a veteran in the outsourced support world – that leads me to think that they’ve worked out all the bugs in their support handling process.
(niyogi, link )
Conclusion
The most important thing to do when looking for an outsourced support company is to know what you are looking for in the company, and understand the companies that you are choosing from well. Please note that this article should be used as part of your own research, rather than a replacement for your research. Good luck in your search for an ideal support solution for your company.
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