Update: DreamHost, for no announced reason, cancelled live chat. Apparently they could not keep up with the number of complaints (that’s what a support person said). Then they recently (08/2012) reinstated it for VPS clients.

I no longer recommend DreamHost to my clients, I recommend BlueHost, who has always had 24/7 chat AND PHONE support (which DreamHost does not.)

For the past month or so, I’ve been able to use live chat to communicate with the folks at DreamHost.com, my web hosting company. While their support ticket system has been excellent, they’ve now improved their support system by adding a live chat feature for some of their customers. I’ve used it several times, and didn’t want to write about it until they officially announced it – and today, they did!

If you’re a DreamHost customer, you can get access to this Live Chat, if you have PS (Private Server) or if you’ve signed up for Premium Support ($9.95 additional per month).

For me, it’s great, because I get to use Live Chat to ask questions and resolve issues on behalf of my website design clients. I still use the Support Ticket system frequently, but it’s nice to be able to use the Live Chat as well for those times when I need an answer quickly.

Here’s the announcement from DreamHost’s October Newsletter (note, their newsletters are written in a style that’s, well, quite funny and a bit sarcastic, so it’s not your typical newsletter, because they’re not a typical hosting company):

Live Chat Support!

Ah, that’s better! I finally feel comfortable and can just continue withthis newsletter, knowing that without even the least bit of effort each section will be clear, concise, and clever! They will practically write themselves from here on out. Soooooo good.

If only our tech support tickets wrote themselves! Like the time we tried that robot-sales-chat thing, oh yeah! That thing worked GREAT! Well, now we’re giving it another go around, except this time our chat responses write themselves _with the help of HUMANS_!

What I’m trying to say is, we’ve now got 24/7/365 Live Chat support available from our web panel (there’s a link at the top of each page near the “Help is on/off” button)!

With one small caveat… you need either a DreamHost PS or our Premium Support add-on! You can add a PS at any time from:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=vserver.provision

And you can add Premium Support ($9.95/mo) from:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=support.msg

(Just act as though you’re going to submit a ticket.. it’s there at the end.)

Sometimes too, generally when we’re super bored, we’ve been opening up the live chat to everybody. So if you happen to see the link at the top of our panel even when you’re not a PS user and haven’t signed up for Premium Support, PLEASE REMAIN CALM.

While most of my clients might never need to actually contact DreamHost, this Live Chat feature has been a fantastic tool for me, and is enabling me to do my job more effectively and efficiently. And perhaps best of all, the folks who are on the other end of Live Chat, are in California, and work directly for DreamHost, so I’m not chatting with folks in India or Russia, or some other country overseas. So when you are a DreamHost customer, you can rest assured that you’re helping the economy of the United States, while supporting a company that offsets it’s carbon emissions. What could be better?

If you found this article helpful, please take a moment to share it with your friends, it will be much appreciated. Thanks! Jill