I did my research and looked around and got recommendations.  I was settled on one and called and they called back a day later.  That was no good.  I called choice #2 and after a single, disastrous phone call with their tech support I decided to go to choice #3 which was MyHosting.com for their VPS package.  I went with them because I called tech support and got a real human being who was very helpful (and answered the question correctly).  So I went with them.

Unfortunately, since then I’ve had horrible tech support.  It took two weeks of tech support to resolve an issue with ordering (yes, just ordering) an SSL certificate.  It’s taken three weeks of going back and forth for them to acknowledge that the mail server wasn’t working right (this is after a very long-time client had emails bounce).  The latest round has taken over week of getting Spam Assassin installed on the server (again some ordering/billing issue) and the damn thing doesn’t even work.  I had one issue early on where the technician actually gave me the wrong instructions and caused my entire domain to be unavailable over a weekend.  So collectively I’ve had a very bad experience.

I should have learned my lesson years ago.  I used MyHosting at one point for my shared hosting.  Again, friendly, very polite people, but their tech support just wasn’t very good and I was spending too much time worrying and fretting over my website.

So I’m on the hunt again for a good, friendly, and useful VPS.  I don’t have the time to muck around with my web server for days on end as I have with MyHosting – I have a business to attend to.  At this point, I’d ideally love for someone to just switch all three of my domains over to their system and just “get ‘er done” if you’ll pardon the colloquialism.

So I’m looking for recommendations.  Don’t recommend one unless you have are absolutely thrilled with them.  Price is always an issue but frankly I just want the damn thing to work and if I do have a problem I want to call and be able to talk to a human being that knows the subject material rather than reading from a script.  The reason I mentioned BlueHost above is that I loved their shared hosting AND their tech support was always helpful – always.  And I used them for five separate websites (and still use them).  Too bad they don’t do VPS.  :(

If you have an Android phone and you have an issue with <insert problem here>, who are you going to turn to?  The hardware manufacturer, the carrier, or Google?  The end consumer doesn’t care they just want the problem solved and just like how Microsoft is responsible for their hardware partners problems, Google will probably be left holding the bag for their hardware partners too.  Let’s hope their Android support is better than their business services help.

I’ve been experiencing issues with my mail server on my virtual private server and thought that going to GMail might be a good solution for a variety of reasons.  Because of Google ID issues I messed the registration up (hey, I didn’t say I was very good at this stuff now did I?) and locked up the domain registration for GMail.  After searching fruitlessly (ironically using Google search), I came to the conclusion that Google doesn’t really want to help you.  It’s downright impossible to talk to a human being or even send off a plain email to a support department.

I was never able to find an official tech support phone number for Google.  Sure, there are forums and articles and other information but nothing to get hold of a real life person – even at a price (as far as I can find).  There are some ways of getting hold of them through forums and other means but it’s all indirect and after sending off what I hope was a message to someone that can help I’m still waiting on even an automated response email saying they’d get back to me.  I’m not holding my breath.

Now, do the same thing for Apple.  It doesn’t take long to find a whole web page full of ways to get help.  Phone, instant messaging, email are all prominently displayed after two clicks on their website.  Sure, some of them cost money, but as a business, when I need support I’ll pay for it.  If that’s still not good enough I can go to one of the over one hundred brick and mortar stores around the world and talk to an Apple Genius for nothing.  If that fails, I can find Apple Resellers and other Apple certified experts in my area.

Apple’s been doing this for decades as a computer and consumer electronics company.  They’ve consistently been ranked very high on support satisfaction surveys.  As a family, we’ve had various minor issues with our Apple components over the years but nothing that a phone call or trip to the local store (either Apple or local reseller) didn’t fix promptly to our satisfaction.  I’m sure there are example of poor customer support with Apple but it seems to be the exception rather than the rule.

People say that one of the great things about Android is that it’s free.  The old axiom that you get what you pay for holds true in this case.  Google’s support is awful in my opinion.  To say that Google is the new Microsoft is an insult to Microsoft.  At least Microsoft got support right even if you have to talk to someone on the other side of the world.

What’s your experience been with Google support?

They gladly said that, of course, they could help.  They usually have 2 backups that they can restore from.  The tech looked up the info and then sheepishly said, “Until it gets too big”.  Which of course, with 20 hours of video (in both H.264 and Flash formats), easily exceeds their limit.

So, for now, the bkeeney site is down until I can get things reinstalled.  Oh, and just to make matters worse, the website of the software author we use is also currently down (related?  possibly but I doubt it) so if it takes a full install to recover I’ll have to wait until they come back up to download the install packages.

Did I mention that I’ve been incredibly busy with consulting work?  I don’t have time for this crap.

I’ll be honest that I was a bit skeptical at first.  Maybe I’m just old enough to not ‘get it’.  I understand the importance of search rankings and all that but the social media thing has been somewhat of a mystery.

One of the first things we installed on our various websites was Google Analytics and I must admit that I get a kick out of seeing where people are coming from and what they’re search for.  Google Analytics is why I know people are coming from the social media sites.  I find it fascinating that some relatively obscure comment or article is drawing people.  As they say, the more eyes that see your product the better chance they’ll at least try it.  Leading them to your website is at least half the battle.

Since we’re heavily into Mac OS X software it comes as no surprise that a lot of referral traffic comes from MacUpdate www.macupdate.com and Version Tracker www.versiontracker.com.  Windows traffic isn’t nearly as clear cut and we’re working on how to get better exposure on that platform.  It’s obvious that the users of the two platforms research and consume their software differently.

I’ve heard some of the buzz about Woopra but I’ll wait a little bit before delving into it.  If you have any first hand experience with it I’d love to hear about it.  What is its strength and is it really useful for a small business like us?

The other thing we’re doing is making sure we get our press releases out.  I hate doing them myself because I have enough stuff on my plate as it is (and marketing speak is anathema to an engineer).  I’m glad to have turned that responsibility over to someone who likes doing them (at least more than me).  We are using prMac http://prmac.com/ and it is obviously making a difference because of its distribution network.  I find links from all over the internet based on the press releases.

Certainly one of the issues we struggle with is finding the time to do it all.  We’re lucky, to some extent, by having multiple employees who can do a bit of everything.  We hired a part time marketing person to help us out with all this stuff.  I know a lot of you don’t have that luxury.  How do you find the time for marketing?  Do you have any marketing tips for the small, independent software developer?

Thanks for reading and giving your comments!