At ThinkHost, we take great pride in our standard of support. Our aim is to answer all queries and address all issue as quickly as possible. We'd like to think that each time a client makes contact with us that they'll walk away from the experience thinking - "what a great team".

We understand that running a web site can be difficult in relation to the hosting aspect, that's why we're here - to ensure that the equipment and server software that your site is running on is performing as it should - when it doesn't; we want to know about it.

While ThinkHost doesn't offer telephone support, our email system is very efficient. By making your enquiries via email, it also enables us to have a record of your support history which can prove to be a great time saver should a particular problem arise again.

If you should find occasion to contact support, there's some things that you can do that can greatly expedite the troubleshooting and resolution process.

Mention the user name and domain name

Many of our clients have more than one domain hosted under their accounts. By mentioning whether the problem you are experiencing applies to a particular domain or to all, as well as your username can decrease the support response time. Our technicians try very hard to resolve issues based on the information you initially provide to save time in the to and fro of emailing.

Duration of issue

How long have you been aware of the problem for? This can help tech support if they need to review server logs

Did you change anything immediately prior to noticing the problem?

Sometimes a change that you may have made may be the culprit, even though it may not appear to be related to the issue you are experiencing. Whatever changes you made, we need to know about it.

Having email problems?

Most email problems can be solved in a single response if you provide

a) your SMTP and POP3 settings
b) the text of any error messages you receive when sending/receiving
c) the email address/es affected

Internal server errors?

These are usually caused by a couple of issues

Have you checked our support documents?

We don't say this in order to shoo you away.. it's just that we may have a tutorial or article on the ThinkHost site that may address your specific problem - and you'll be able to fix it on the spot rather than wait for our support response.  A listing of tutorials can be located in our Knowledge Base.

If there isn't documentation specific to your problem, or you are still unsure of the solution, please contact us.

We want you to understand

It's very important to us that you understand any support/advice that we give you. We make every attempt to communicate to our clients at a level they are comfortable with. We'd much rather you ask us to clarify a point, rather than you being frustrated and still confused. By asking for clarification, it also helps us to further hone our communication skills.

Attachments

We appreciate that clients try to help us out by sending attachments such as screenshots or web pages to help explain the issue they are experiencing, but due to security reasons, these attachments will be stripped off the support email, so we'll never get to see them. If you need to send an attachment our team can provide you with a specific email address.

Be as clear as you possibly can

Sometimes clients who are new to the web hosting arena will use technical terminology in their support requests that they misunderstand. If you have good technical knowledge, by all means please use as many terms as you like - but if you aren't sure of their meaning, just try explaining in simple language  and we'll figure it out or contact you for further clarification.

Opening multiple tickets

If you're in a hurry, the temptation can be to open multiple tickets regarding the same issue. We ask that you do not do this as this actually slows down the support process and causes confusion for our team. Once you have opened a ticket, please reply to the same ticket thread. Even if you haven't had a response from our team, you can add to that ticket thread by replying again to the last communication from our support system. If you haven't had a personal response to your last communication within 12 hours, please try submitting the ticket again and alert our Business Operations Manager, Michael Bloch for follow up.

Replying/quoting responses from our team

Do not reply to a ticket unless you wish to have it continued, and for fastest service, please do not include/quote our responses when replying. If you do continually include the response from our team in your replies, it makes the ticket thread in our support interface very long and messy, therefore more prone to misunderstandings and miscommunications.

Support times can vary

The vast majority of our support tickets are addressed in a couple of hours as we have technicians on hand 24 hours a day, but occasionally it may take up to 24 hours for a response/resolution. We attend to tickets in the order they are received unless there is a critical problem. 

For example, you may be having problems with your web statistics application and another client is not receiving any email and they are expecting a very important document. Depending on the exact circumstances we may give priority to the email issue. We appreciate your understanding of this, that way you can also rest assured that if you should have an urgent problem, we'll attend to it as quickly as possible.

Thanks for taking the time to read this! May all your time with ThinkHost be trouble free, but even if you should run into problems, we'd like you to feel confident in approaching our support team that they will attend you in a rapid and courteous manner.

Did you know?

You can contact ThinkHost support via any page on the site by using the contact form on the left hand side of each page.