Feedback & Suggestions


Cody R.

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And a personal spell checker for Tony is in the works ...

Your boss simply types super fast...probably 300 wpm. At that rate, his keyboard is gonna burn out fast. I can still remember one critical support ticket I had that he answered in less than one minute!

So, how many keyboards had he burn out so far?

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Your boss simply types super fast...probably 300 wpm. At that rate, his keyboard is gonna burn out fast. I can still remember one critical support ticket I had that he answered in less than one minute!

So, how many keyboards had he burn out so far?

I'm on my second logitech access keyboard. I have a whole box of them so I'm never running out. I'm resistant to new keyboards I like the noise the keyboard makes.

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I've been a customer for 3 months now, and I'm quite pleased :)

For my needs, nothing much has required support tickets, but the tickets I did submit were answered quickly and without the "I'm talking to a wall" impression you get from some support channels.

I'm also liking this "semi-managed" (I believe Tony's words were on WebHostingTalk) service - not paying extra to have someone stare at my account all the time but at the same time get help and/or pointers to how to fix it myself (because learning is fun :D) is exactly what I need.

Really, the only improvement I could see possible (beyond your in-development Control Panel that hopefully will have a less confusing UI and less "Engrish" spelling than LxAdmin, while still keep memory usage in mind) would be to offer more customisation when it comes to plans.

For instance, if I need more of one thing (be it RAM, space or bandwidth) my only choice is the next plan. It would be nice to be able to have customisable plans, so that customers could tailor their account to their requirements.

I understand this can be quite difficult (having to value the different things, for one), though...

All in all though, keep up the good work =D

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I have a whole box of them so I'm never running out.

LOL...That's very judicious planning, as usual.

Anyways…

I like the fact that Hawk Host makes an effort to keep their software up-to-date which I find is quite rare in very large hosting companies as there are just too many servers. Obviously I'm concerned that the frequency of software updates would be affected if one day Hawk Host has too many servers for the team to handle. I haven't seen it happen yet but I do wonder.

I was quite impressed when HH decided to upgrade their old servers to newer machines with better hardware specs in January this year. It showed that they care for their existing customers even as they continue to get new customers.

The LiteSpeed upgrade without charging us extra was quite a bonus. We get the benefits of a faster system without additional costs. This is one example of them going above and beyond.

I am continually amazed by each new server that appears. The hardware specs are just phenomenal and prices remain just as good and even better with their frequent discounts/coupons.

As for support, it's usually fast and good. I've tried out the new support and they are professional and know their stuff.

I would say Hawk Host provides top quality hosting in its combination of hardware, software, support, and management.

Edited by speedturtle
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  • 2 months later...

Stumbled on this post... here's the ticket I sent in last week:

I just wanted to drop a note how pleased I am with Hawk Host. I started noticing a few weeks ago that the Saturn server has been slightly sluggish by Hawk Host's high standards--not sluggish at all for a "normal" host. I pop onto the forums to check on this recent brief downtime (no biggie--Hawk Host has the best uptime I've ever experienced) and see you guys have read my mind and already have plans to upgrade Saturn's hardware. Great!

I always plug Hawk Host whenever I see people looking for a quality shared hosting provider. I couldn't be happier. Hawk Host will be the first host I've ever renewed with--the old ones always ended up sucking after my first year was up.

In short, I'm pretty happy ;) I'm very excited about the Saturn upgrades--the server is going to fly!

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  • 3 months later...
What do you think we can do to improve? Do you think we’ve let any part of our service degrade in quality? Do you have any gripes or pet peeves? Please let us know! We love hearing from you guys, without you we’re nothing!

As far as reliability of my site being up, once it was transferred to HawkHost, I don't have any complaints.

My web host transition from GoDaddy to HawkHost was not flawless. If I were to narrow it down, the crux of it is probably traceable to an oversight in communication. One day, I will try to go back through the old support tickets, and give you a better idea of how the initial problems could have been avoided.

More relevant to the present day and time, though, I don't really understand why you guys have been so slow to extend your branding efforts to your forum area. It doesn't affect the quality of my site's web hosting, certainly, but it does detract from the overall experience - but only if and when I use your forums. Your forum area advertises vBulletin more than it advertises HawkHost.

While at your forum area, HawkHost's favicon image doesn't show up in the URL bar of the web browser, either. You upload a favicon file to overwrite the other one, so I'm not sure why that hasn't long since been done, already.

I recently was fiddling around with the listed offerings information of different web hosting companies, to get a better idea of which web host offers more for the money, and one area where HawkHost would probably be better off stressing more to prospective customers is server hardware.

# Dual Quad Core Xeon 5430

# 12 GB of DDR system RAM

Source: http://www.hawkhost.com/Shared/compare

That info was easier to find on the HawkHost site than something comparable on the MDDHosting site, for example, where what I came across while comparing plans was the following:

Our servers are built using Xeon Quad Core processors and a minimum of 4 gigabytes of ram.

Source: http://www.mddhosting.com/company.php

I enjoy reading Tony's blog postings. However, there are so very few of them, that I would not rate HawkHost very highly for its use of a blog. The blog seems to be largely an afterthought for HawkHost.

I am short on time here, today, and must end this here.

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We're actually working to get things changed up a bit around the forums, and to do exactly what you pointed out -- to make it more branded for us :)

As for the server specs it's listed on the home page and at the bottom of the package offerings page, and lastly on the server page. You are right though in saying we don't make it very obvious, so we'll discuss a way to change this.

Thanks for the extensive feedback, things like this help us improve in areas you guys find important.

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We're actually working to get things changed up a bit around the forums, and to do exactly what you pointed out -- to make it more branded for us :)

You guys have a great brand look - but, only when you choose to utilize it. I haven't seen a better looking mascot in the web hosting industry. At least, not as of yet, I haven't. I won't say the same for that pitiful looking frog, that you intend to use for the FrogHost brand, but the HawkHost hawk looks great. One thing that would be an improvement for the hawk mascot, though, would be to keep the same look, but different poses.

Not extending that brand look to your forums doesn't hurt anything, physically speaking, but it is a partial wasting of something that you guys took the time, effort, and trouble to build in the first place. The plain, vanilla vBulletin forums work fine, but they don't leave the site visitor with the same impression that your site's front page leaves them with. The collective feel is less professional, overall, than it probably would be, were the brand look extended to the forum area.

Average Internet users who start websites are more likely to have experience using forums than using support ticket software, which is why forums should be an integral component of a modern web hosting company's support efforts. Web hosting companies tend to have a dreadful tendency to gear things towards themselves, rather than to their clients or to their potential clients.

As for the server specs it's listed on the home page and at the bottom of the package offerings page, and lastly on the server page. You are right though in saying we don't make it very obvious, so we'll discuss a way to change this.

Yes, it's there - assuming that a site visitor bothers to scroll down and happen across it.

That aside, it is a very relevant consideration (hardware specifications) in discussions of comparisons between web hosts in web hosting forums such as WebHostingTalk and others, where people post and are trying to figure out what web host to go with. I think that disk space and bandwidth tend to dominate the thought process of people looking for a web host - probably due to the fact that those two things tend to receive the lion's share of web hosting companies' advertising focus.

Thanks for the extensive feedback, things like this help us improve in areas you guys find important.

The things that you guys do right is not a problem for either your customers or your company. HawkHost does a number of things right. Some of what you do wrong, or do not do at all, would probably still not be an issue with at least some prospective or current customers. But, if you want to maximize results, then the area to focus is on the problem areas or the areas where you're not really doing anything, at all, but perhaps where you should be. But, the same holds equally true for every web hosting company. You're no different than all of your competitors, in that regard.

If you want an advantage over many of your competitors, then one way to achieve that is to simply always be receptive to criticism. If you take criticism(s) personally, then that will incur disadvantage to your company. Criticism is, after all, at the core of a concept known as "critical analysis." I'm not saying that your company takes criticism personally, either. Rather, I am merely elaborating upon how criticism plays a critical role in the ability of a company to improve.

My vantage point is somewhat limited, of course, but from what I have seen and encountered, to date, your company really doesn't do a lot of things too terribly wrong. It gets a lot of things right.

If your company has an Achilles heel, then it probably a two-fold thing. One aspect of that Achilles heel is communication. The other aspect of it is attention-to-detail. I can even provide you a specific instance to help illustrate the point.

I refer you to support ticket # IYE-529039. If you will refer to the third entry in that particular string of support ticket discussions, then you will see where I posted how long that Cody told me that it would take to transfer my site's files from GoDaddy to HawkHost, and how long it had been and it still wasn't done.

I am not trying to pick on Cody, but this example is a sterling example of how a bit more attention to detail could have helped to reduce the amount of time that lapsed. The time that lapsed impacted the customer's (namely, myself, in that particular instance - but it could be someone else in a different example) impression and expectation. A single oversight can easily and very quickly magnify a problem and bloat time frames.

If you scroll further down that very same support ticket, you will find where I pondered invoking HawkHost's 30-day money back guarantee. If you are trying to win a new customer's loyalty, then you definitely don't want them to begin thinking about possibly needing or wanting to invoke that guarantee.

Understand, I don't regret switching from GoDaddy to HawkHost. I go to the trouble of posting this, now, to try and help you guys at HawkHost to understand how even a simple oversight can initiate a cycle that can quickly begin to unravel relationships with clients.

It was not HawkHost's fault, of course, that I wait until the proverbial eleventh hour of my web hosting plan's time with GoDaddy to try and switch things over to HawkHost. However, should that really matter? Shouldn't transitions to HawkHost be seamless for new customers?

During that episode, I ended up extending my service with GoDaddy for one extra month. Should a client have to do that or feel a need to do that? Why did I do it? One, because GoDaddy's tech support succeeded in persuading me to buy that service from them, even as I was leaving their company. That's a feather in their staff's hat. Two, my disdain for GoDaddy's control panel had grown so great over time that there was no way that I was not going to change web hosts - be it to HawkHost or to someone else. Three, I wanted peace of mind that I would have something of my website left to actually transfer to a new web host.

It is the same combination of things, attention-to-detail and communication deficiencies, that is at the crux of what is wrong with HawkHost's blog. HawkHost communicates through its blog only infrequently, with no attention-to-detail apparently given to the need to post with a far greater degree of regularity. Tony writes some great blog entries - but, only when he bothers to take the time to actually do it. What difference does it make? The HawkHost blog could potentially be one of your company's greatest knowledge bases - but, it isn't.

If you look hard enough, you might also discover that very same combo to be the prime culprit in the area of HawkHost not cementing relationships with its existing client base, sufficient to the degree that they jump ship to other web hosts. Tony may think that it is due to other web hosts offering unlimited disk space and bandwidth, but that is likely due primarily to those individuals not really sensing that they have a relationship of any note. Rather, you're probably just a web host to them.

If tech support is the hinge point of your efforts to build relationships with clients, then any web host offering great tech support constitutes a viable threat to your entire client base. How many web hosts offer 99.9% uptime, these days, by the way? Quite an awful lot, the last time that I looked.

In order to provide great tech support, a company has to make it a priority, and it has to allocate sufficient manpower to make great tech support a reality. This is common sense. The same holds true for building relationships with clients. Tech support should be a part of a web hosting company's relationship with its clients. It should not, however, become a substitute for the relationship, which is unfortunately the case with many web hosting companies.

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Your forums, here, have a section titled "Customer Reviews." Yet, all of the reviews of customer experiences that are posted in the forums here are not located in this forum. An example of this can be found here:

http://forums.hawkhost.com/showthread.php?t=206

Wouldn't it make more sense to move such postings to the Customer Reviews section?

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Your forums, here, have a section titled "Customer Reviews." Yet, all of the reviews of customer experiences that are posted in the forums here are not located in this forum. An example of this can be found here:

http://forums.hawkhost.com/showthread.php?t=206

Wouldn't it make more sense to move such postings to the Customer Reviews section?

That's an excellent suggestion! It would make it so much easier for prospective customers to find reviews. Hawk Host has some really awesome stellar reviews and it would be a grave pity for them to be buried among all other threads.

So...I did a quick search through the forum and here is a list of all reviews:

http://forums.hawkhost.com/showthread.php?t=23

http://forums.hawkhost.com/showthread.php?t=91 (review + suggestions)

http://forums.hawkhost.com/showthread.php?t=97

http://forums.hawkhost.com/showthread.php?t=127

http://forums.hawkhost.com/showthread.php?t=141

http://forums.hawkhost.com/showthread.php?t=160

http://forums.hawkhost.com/showthread.php?t=205

http://forums.hawkhost.com/showthread.php?t=206

http://forums.hawkhost.com/showthread.php?t=224

http://forums.hawkhost.com/showthread.php?t=359

http://forums.hawkhost.com/showthread.php?t=363

http://forums.hawkhost.com/showthread.php?t=378

http://forums.hawkhost.com/showthread.php?t=438

http://forums.hawkhost.com/showthread.php?t=462

http://forums.hawkhost.com/showthread.php?t=478

http://forums.hawkhost.com/showthread.php?t=498

http://forums.hawkhost.com/showthread.php?t=677

This should help them with moving the review threads to the "Customer Review" section.

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On the blog end, not so well.

If HawkHost is a happening host, then why isn't something ALWAYS happening at HawkHost?

If you apply the above criteria laid out by Cody to HawkHost's blog, then shouldn't HawkHost have something to blog about every single day?

I think the frequency of their blog posting is fine. I would rather they post something worth reading than post daily for the sake of posting. As an analogy, would you like to converse with someone who talks a lot but really saying nothing worthwhile? Hearing all that empty chatter is bound to switch one off.

I believe a lot of things are happening in Hawk Host and they can't possibly blog about every single happening because sometimes certain things must be kept secret until it's time to reveal.

Blogging well and sensibly takes time and effort. Maybe available time to blog is what they don't have a lot of since they have to relate and respond to so many customers. All of us have the same amount of time but each of us have a different set of priorities. Who am I to say their priorities is not right if it doesn't agree with mine?

Edited by speedturtle
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I think the frequency of their blog posting is fine. I would rather they post something worth reading than post daily for the sake of posting. As an analogy, would you like to converse with someone who talks a lot but really saying nothing worthwhile? Hearing all that empty chatter is bound to switch one off.

I believe a lot of things are happening in Hawk Host and they can't possibly blog about every single happening because sometimes certain things must be kept secret until it's time to reveal.

Blogging well and sensibly takes time and effort. Maybe available time to blog is what they don't have a lot of since they have to relate and respond to so many customers. All of us have the same amount of time but each of us have a different set of priorities. Who am I to say their priorities is not right if it doesn't agree with mine?

Exactly blogging about every little thing is well silly. It also hurts matter when some things cannot be revealed.

Oh for the curious people in January we had this much activity in our internal project management system. This encompasses bugs in stuff, features. So it would include cPanel features, company features, site features then bugs and all that. It's really stuff that is not part of support, sales or billing.

Issues: 83

Issues still opened: 30

We also did not start using this 100% until a few weeks ago. Just difficult to keep track of it all in email with the multiple staff handling things.

So I guess have to wait and see what all was done and what's coming down the pipeline :)

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