Free Hosting Customer Support: MilesWeb vs Other Providers

When it comes to free web hosting, one of the most common concerns is: if you are not paying, will the provider actually help you when things go wrong? This article analyzes the free hosting customer support offered by different providers, how MilesWeb’s Free Hosting deals with support, and a few other alternatives to help you determine if a free hosting plan is viable support-wise for your project.

Why Customer Support Matters for Free Hosting

Free hosting is considered a “try-before-you-buy” option for small personal websites or as the test ground for high-performing websites. However, even in these scenarios, problems such as website downtime, misconfigured DNS, malfunctioning email, and issues with plugins or themes can occur. Quick and effective support (chat, ticket, or phone) can help in:

• Low downtime
• Assisting non-technical users in answering a question
• Encouraging an upgrade to a paid plan
• Making certain that you won’t be abandoned and left with a broken site

For these reasons, when assessing a free hosting service, support and responsiveness (live chat, 24/7 support, and quick response times) will be your most important criteria. Choosing the best free hosting with support ensures you get help when it matters most.

MilesWeb’s Free Web Hosting—Support Overview & Features

MilesWeb’s site outlines quite a bit of information regarding their free web hosting and support system:

What you get in MilesWeb Free Hosting:

• Disk space: 500 MB
• Bandwidth: 5 GB
• 1 MySQL database
• 1 FTP account
• 1 cron job
• Control panel
• 1-click installer
• WordPress optimized
• Instant setup after signup

MilesWeb Support Channels & Promises

• MilesWeb claims to provide 24/7/365 support through live chat, email, and a ticketing system. This makes it one of the rare examples of free web hosting with live chat, which is usually a premium feature among competitors.
• “Live Chat Support” states that users (accounts) are able to contact support staff through chat. 
• MilesWeb prides itself on its “expert support” for paid and managed hosting and emphasizes “24×7 support to resolve hosting-related issues.”

This means that while MilesWeb has built a support system, free-hosting clients enjoy the same support as paid clients (in prioritization, speed of response, or scope of support that may be available).

Comparing Support Features: MilesWeb & Other Free Hosting Providers

Let’s look in detail about MilesWeb Free Hosting compared to other free hosting providers with 24/7 support, using data that is publicly available.

Analysis & Key Takeaways

• Unlike most popular free hosting services, MilesWeb Free Hosting provides, and is one of the only free hosting services to provide, 24/7 direct support (chat, ticket, email). This level of free hosting customer support is rarely available in the industry.
• Most of the popular free hosting services (Wix, WordPress.com, and Weebly) only provide access to live chat for paid services, leaving free users to work with support forums or self-service.
• 000WebHost (a free host by Hostinger) provides only community support, which may be a source of frustration for new users.

Best Practices & Tips if You Use Free Hosting with Support

• Documenting your issues (screenshots, timestamps, and error messages) makes it easier for support to resolve the issue and provides evidence of the issues you’re experiencing.
• To expedite the issue resolution, please use the internal support system (chat/ticket) before community forums or assistance.
• To find a quick solution, we recommend checking our documented knowledge base or help articles.
• When your website grows, consider the upgrade. Paid plans come with better support for SLAs.
• You can evaluate the support quality early on by sending a simple request, such as “Which version of PHP do you use?” This will show you the response time and the quality of the answer.