Yes…finally!
It took a look time to find the right company to partner with but we did it and very happy with the results so far.
From now on, there will be 24-hour support through our ticket system:
- They will help with all emergency issues. Please use our ticket system if you have a random site down or server down.
- Other non-emergency requests or questions regarding WordPress or billing issues will still be handled by myself or our internal team (through tickets, or Slack for dedicated VPS clients).
- In fact, most tickets on USA business hours will still be handled by myself and our internal team.
- The support team is already deployed and some of you may have engaged them in the tickets as “Billy Support”. I put a dummy name to differentiate them from our core team. They are courteous, helpful, and with good English.
Back-story on how we got to this point
I originally built JVPS to be a high-performance low-maintenance hosting service. Our target customers were tech-savvy WordPress owners who already knew basic hosting things and wouldn’t need us much for regular support. We previously offered “unofficial support” as in…we would support you the best we could but only during US hours.
As we grew through word-of-mouth (thanks to you guys), it was only a matter of time before we picked up clients that did break their site. But it was also sometimes the tech-savvy clients who just couldn’t figure out tiny issues or why their sites were down. And yes, of course random server downs here and there. The other tough part were our clients in Europe, Asia, Australia who had different timezones and sometimes had problems when our core team was asleep.
And so I tried putting our Asia-based admins (the ones I worked with for 5-10 years) to monitor the support channels during US off-hours but it was a mess. Our biggest problem is actually that we almost never have problems. We’ll have 2-3 months where NOTHING happens, and then maybe two issues all in the same day.
By the time we had issues, the Asia admins had already stopped monitoring our channels as closely since they felt nothing ever happens with JVPS. As I’m sure some of you may know, it’s frustrating as hell to have downtime without help for 3-4 hours. I apologize tremendously for those who suffered that but did eventually find a solution.
I scoped out different support companies. Checked their rates, their skills, and reputation in the industry. What things they would cover and such and such. To keep costs as low as possible, we are on a limited plan that offers only ticket support. With a general pricing of about $10 per ticket. If you are interested in paying higher hosting costs but also have phone and chat support, do let me know.
I’m sorry for anyone that suffered through our growing pains but I hope to make JVPS as smooth as possible for the many years ahead. The goal will always be the same: slow-growthing our way to an absolutely 100% reliable high-performance WordPress hosting service. I consider damn near all of you friends, and I will take care of every single one of you.
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