How to improve your VPS service?

[kunnu]

1. What type of changes you want to see in a VPS providers?

(Provide at lest 2 or 3 changes)

2. How can you easily connect with your customer?

(Excluding Forum, Blog and Ticket System and must be secure way.)

 

[Munzy]

Storage VPS. These are becoming more and more required as people need more backups . 

Dump a backup to a ssh server . Allow users to take a weekly backup and place the data on a remote server they control . This is a bonus for both of you .

Secure templates . Save us all the trouble of bad neighbors and implement auto updates , fail2ban, and implement proper tutorials on how to secure the server.

IRC is a great way and used by a few . Another good one is Skype, though i personally hate it . Just make sure there is multiple on case one isn't working .

 

[drmike]

1. Integration for customer support.  Regular updates that hit multiple means when something massively fails and gets out there early on.  I hate waiting 3 days for a provider to say they had a problem.  I knew that 3 minutes into that problem and got usually ignored.

2. Support team that isn't practicing for the Stanley Cup with their ticket hockey.  Just provide the support already, for most stuff.  I understand when support end folks can't touch the money.  Technical though? Meh.

3. API.  I don't use them, would like to and will in the future.  More stuff needs API'd.

4. I'll support the dumps of backups to something meaningful and useful that is also per se portable.

 

[HN-Matt]

Support team that isn't practicing for the Stanley Cup with their ticket hockey.  Just provide the support already,

Gotta love the 'choose your battles wisely with us' school of tech support.

The school of inflexible anachronistic canned responses is neck and neck with the school of 'technical correctness is the new political correctness' for a close second.

 

[VATruica]

1.

Integrated and free of charge backup/snapshot system . 

APIs - can save some time especially when using external services like email, where you need certain DNS records / configurations for each of the domains hosted

2. We should put more words on "secure way" but I would go for IRC. 

 

[GIANT_CRAB]

1. They should allow me to use a /8 for email marketing. Free hosting with DDoS protection. 5 minutes response time and 10 minutes resolution time.

2. You can connect with customers through email marketing.

 

[joepie91]

XMPP+OTR is an interesting support mechanism. To my knowledge, only UrDN offers that at the moment.

 

[800calls]

1. What type of changes you want to see in a VPS providers?

• Good, clean minimal templates. When I install Debian, I want Debian, not Debian with Apache, Samba, MySQL, etc all preloaded on said image. Too many hosts bundle in crap in their default images, and don't bother labeling or mentioning what they have thrown in. Every extra default running app is a security concern, and ideally, you want as few security concerns as possible.
• Gotta agree with Munzy, backup and snapshotting is a huge feature I see missing on most VPS providers, even though it is included on most control panels and isn't generally that hard to set up.

2. How can you easily connect with your customer?

• IRC - Have a person or bot idle on an IRC channel dedicated to your business, set up SMS/Push notifications to know when people want to talk to you on IRC.
• Phone - Offer some level of phone support, if its urgent (node is down, noisy neighbors, etc) your customers are going to look up your WHOIS, or look on their credit card statements or look up your business license to get in contact with you. By offering an offical phone number (and using that in your WHOIS, CC processor or PayPal registration, and on your site), you won't end up with angry customers searching every nook and cranny looking for your number.

 

[farhanideas]

1. What type of changes you want to see in a VPS providers?

• Good, clean minimal templates. When I install Debian, I want Debian, not Debian with Apache, Samba, MySQL, etc all preloaded on said image. Too many hosts bundle in crap in their default images, and don't bother labeling or mentioning what they have thrown in. Every extra default running app is a security concern, and ideally, you want as few security concerns as possible.
• Gotta agree with Munzy, backup and snapshotting is a huge feature I see missing on most VPS providers, even though it is included on most control panels and isn't generally that hard to set up.

2. How can you easily connect with your customer?

• IRC - Have a person or bot idle on an IRC channel dedicated to your business, set up SMS/Push notifications to know when people want to talk to you on IRC.
• Phone - Offer some level of phone support, if its urgent (node is down, noisy neighbors, etc) your customers are going to look up your WHOIS, or look on their credit card statements or look up your business license to get in contact with you. By offering an offical phone number (and using that in your WHOIS, CC processor or PayPal registration, and on your site), you won't end up with angry customers searching every nook and cranny looking for your number.

Great post i agree with him

 

[hostneverdie]

VPS is a type of hosting that was design for flexibility with less budget than a dedicated server. For a VPS provider one cloud improve its service by the following.

- Automated backup on a remote server.
- Use cloud technology for the VPS infrastructure for better scalability and reliability.
- Readymade VPS such as WordPress, Minecraft, and Forex could be helpful for some clients.