10 Month, 3 Week Review


CharlesM

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It's been just a little shy of eleven months, since I became a HawkHost customer, if I looked at the right e-mail in my in-box.

All things considered, I think that HawkHost has been a really good and reliable web hosting company. On the customer service end of things, I think that HawkHost is top notch. the personnel are very helpful, helping me to sort through whatever problem rears its head on those very few occasions that something does happen. It's a big help, and a true comfort, to be able to call upon their expertise, both individually and collectively, in order to keep my websites up, running, and accessible by site visitors.

In a nutshell, I would characterize HawkHost as a quality act. I don't get paid for saying that. I'm not an affiliate. My sites are relatively small, and are basically hobby type sites, but even still, it's nice not to have to continually sort through web host headaches. HawkHost is a good place to roost, if you're looking for a web host.

Fabian Porter, Gary Paul, and Tony Baird, all HawkHost personnel, helped me with my latest problem, a forum issue. Tony gave me the solution to a problem that cropped up, saving me time and money. I am trying to recall, offhand, if I have interacted with Gary before, but I can't recall. Fabian, I do recall interacting with, before, on several occasions. Fabian is always a class act, and there just isn't anyone at HawkHost that I have encountered who leads the way in customer service more so than Fabian. I browsed the HawkHost blog, tonight, and noticed where Tony posted that HawkHost's profits were up. You guys need to make sure that Fabian gets a raise, out of those profits.

I don't know any of HawkHost's personnel on a personal level. My interactions with them relate to web hosting, in some way, shape, or form. I've dealt with some crappy web hosting companies, before, down through the years. HawkHost, though, doesn't fall into that category, based upon my first-hand experience with them over the last almost eleven months or so.

I can, in good conscience, recommend HawkHost as a webhost for anyone out there who might be looking for a web host to host a website with. I say this, whether you are new to having your own website, or if you are a veteran webmaster. HawkHost has a good price and a good product, backed up by good customer service. Their service is actually better than good. It's superior.

At a bare minimum, I think that you should at least consider HawkHost, when looking for a new webhost, even if you eventually end up picking another company to host your site with. HawkHost isn't the only decent web hosting company out there. There are others, certainly. HawkHost doesn't hold a monopoly upon good service in the web hosting industry, but it consistently delivers good service to me. And that, I think, warrants sharing with others.

- Charles -

http://GrimFinger.Net

http://PlayByMail.Net

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Fabian is stealing the limelight! Thanks for the awesome review.. very in-depth and seeing from your past posts (we frequent WHT) I know you're very pragmatic / detail oriented so I'm somewhat surprised we passed with flying colors.

Any recommendations on how to improve? Anything you would like to see?

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Fabian is stealing the limelight! Thanks for the awesome review.. very in-depth and seeing from your past posts (we frequent WHT) I know you're very pragmatic / detail oriented so I'm somewhat surprised we passed with flying colors.

Of everyone at HawkHost that I have dealt with and interacted with over the whole period of time that I have interacted with any or all of you, none of HawkHost's personnel have left me with a sour taste in my mouth. Some of you I rate higher than others of you, but one thing that is probably worth highlighting is that I don't rate any of you as being bad or as being a negative for the company. Both as individuals and collectively, as a team, I give HawkHost personnel two thumbs up. If there are HawkHost personnel who warrant a negative rating, then I haven't interacted with them, yet.

I don't expect perfection from any web hosting company that I utilize for web hosting services. Things happen, and that's simply a fact of life. Perfection, itself, is unobtainable. I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist. I tend to be a realist. The simple reality is that HawkHost is reliable, on a day in, day out basis. HawkHost is consistently reliable. HawkHost personnel are very consistent in responding to support tickets in a timely manner. There tends to be very little in the way of site downtime. Occasionally, there might be, but there simply have been no extended periods of site downtime - ever. It just hasn't happened, as far as I am aware.

I haven't used WHT in a while, although I think that it's a great site. It has its quirks, of course, but even still, it's a very valuable resource for those looking for web hosting services.

One of HawkHost's key strengths as a web hosting company is its response time to support tickets. It's not just that you guys respond fairly quickly. Rather, when you do respond, and it does tend to be quick, mind you, it's not just a response. There's actual support that accompanies the communications that take place between myself, as a web hosting customer, and HawkHost personnel. I never fret over which one of HawkHost's employees will be the one that responds, when I create a support ticket. The individual personalities are a non-issue. I already have confidence that support is just a support ticket away. Your team is very good at building the confidence level of the end consumer of your company's products and services.

Any recommendations on how to improve? Anything you would like to see?

There's always room for improvement. There's no exception to that general rule of thumb.

Since you asked, Cody, let's start with yourself. You stated, "I know you're very pragmatic / detail oriented so I'm somewhat surprised we passed with flying colors." The real question here is, why were you, as an employee of HawkHost, surprised that your company passed with flying colors, with me, your customer?

To me, it really shouldn't come as a surprise. The only surprise should be if someone doesn't give HawkHost flying colors in their review of your company.

One thing that you guys could do is to add a few more links at the top of your forum index page. As an example, there's no link to the HawkHost blog from that page, but there is such a link from your company's home page.

You guys have one of the very best mascots in all of web hosting, but HawkHost seems to make little, if any, real effort to exploit that. Fantastic mascot, yet very few poses of your company's namesake in action. You guys finally managed to have the company bird to roost at the top of the forum index page, but that took the proverbial forever. If you guys did everything that slow, then HawkHost would have been out of business long ago.

Another area that your company could look at is in the area of following up, either weeks or months after the fact, just to see if your company is up to par with its customers. Because you guys do such a good job, it may be easy to overlook why this type of follow up can be helpful. It's about customer relations, and cementing the bond between customer and company.

Where service issues are concerned, if HawkHost will focus upon what I term service-plus, rather than just service, then that will take things another notch higher in the customer satisfaction arena. Tony zeroing in on why my forum didn't look right is one example of service-plus. Ultimately, I did not succeed in getting my forum software upgraded, with the old database imported, in the manner that I wanted to end up at. Had I ended up there, then that, to me, would have been service plus. I don't fault your technical support for failing me, but for helping me to salvage what could have been a disaster for me. To provide service-plus in all instances of technical support will require a more manpower-intensive approach, but it will also effectively elevate your company beyond the absolute vast majority of your competitors in the web hosting industry. That said, the simple fact of the matter is that your customer service is already ahead of the vast majority of your competitors. From your company's perspective, the difference might end up being a difference of degrees.

You guys receive lots of compliments about your service, already - and have, for quite some time, now. How often is your company's customer service described as fanatical, though? I rate it as superior, but I would not go so far as to describe it as fanatical. I don't know that I would use that term to describe any web hosting company that I have ever interacted with, though. In some instances in the web hosting sector, it may not even be possible to achieve that level of devotion and commitment to customer service. That's just a fact of life, too.

At the present time, there simply are no major voids or gaps in HawkHost's customer service. Granted, that's from my perspective, and I can't speak for any of HawkHost's other customers. Their respective experiences may or may not vary from what my own experiences have been, to date.

On a separate note, if I may ask here, whatever happened to HawkHost's other web hosting venture, FrogHost? The FrogBlog hasn't been posted to in almost six months. Somebody sure dropped the ball there. I don't have a FrogHost web hosting account, but I still like to check in on how it is doing, from time to time. The FrogHost forums also seem to have a total of 65 postings in them. That's sad, gentlemen. Sad, sad, sad. And what's with that ugly image in the header portion of the FrogBlog home page? I don't see a single frog in it. Thus, the importance of your company's branding concept is trivialized.

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Since you asked, Cody, let's start with yourself. You stated, "I know you're very pragmatic / detail oriented so I'm somewhat surprised we passed with flying colors." The real question here is, why were you, as an employee of HawkHost, surprised that your company passed with flying colors, with me, your customer?

Let me venture a guess: They probably think you have very high standards, and naturally they were surprised by your encouraging review. They're quite a humble lot, really...which is a good thing. :)

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