What is the nicest thing a hosting company has done for you?

A lot of people always say bad things about hosting companies. But I don't think many people give a lot of thought about the nice things they do. What is something nice that a hosting company has done for you? If you can't think of any then maybe you've been picking the wrong ones. Also, if you've ever met a support representative that wasn't just there to do a satisfactory job. One that really communicated and was happy to be talking with you.

Over 16+ yrs of using web hosts, I've probably used over 60+ web hosts and currently actively using 19+ web hosts. Some of the nicest things some web hosts have done include

1. Free dedicated server hosting when i ran into some financial issues due to spike in growth of site which I couldn't cover financially at the previous web hosting and the server was down for hardware failure ~12-15+ yrs ago. Made up for it as back in the day dedicated servers easily ran into $500-1,500 month mark and referring probably over ~60+ dedicated hosting clients (don't recall exact number) their way from word of mouth as part of my consulting work is advising my clients on web hosts/server specs to choose and evaluating web hosts on behalf of my clients

2. One web host refunding my hosting payments 12+ months later after they did an audit and found out they overcharged me. They contacted me to say I over paid after a whole year !

3. Web hosts giving my referred clients heavy discounts on custom dedicated server configuration not available on their list prices/web sites Not uncommon for me to refer up to 200+ clients to various web hosts per year

4. One web host was kind enough to suspend hosting payments for 6+ months, when I told them i was canceling due finances and not having the time to do the required testing I planned for the server. So they asked when I would have the time to use the server and suspended it until I had the time - so my data was intact just i wasn't using or logging into server while i was busy.

5. Web hosts lending me dedicated server configs for various benchmarking tests/reviews I do in my free time.

6. Lately, a few web hosts have been kind enough to provide free vps hosting as a way of supporting my Centmin Mod LEMP project (which they are fans of, use or just want to help), so test vps servers for various Centmin Mod related development and testing work (i.e. letsencrypt ssl integration work etc) as well as additions to my geodns cluster.

Been very fortunate overall for web hosting experiences over the years. Guess, this year has been the most troublesome with cloudshard.com closing down by Jan 31, 2017 and affecting 1 of my vps' directly and another 5+ vps indirectly (web host colocates with cloudshard) + wiredtree's acquisition by liquidweb !

The nicest thing that a hosting company has done for me was to give me 3 extra months of hosting for free. There was some unscheduled emergency maintenance and it was supposed to be down approximately 30 minutes but took almost 2 hours.

I didn't know the emergency maintenance was going on and after my sites were down for about 30 minutes I noticed this and contacted support. They told me about the situation and added 1 month of free hosting to my account.

After it got to be almost two hours I contacted them again and they told me the situation and added 2 more months of free hosting to my account for a total of 3 free months of hosting for about 2 hours of downtime.

Isn't there a saying about the quickest way to a man's heart is to give him free web hosting? :vteen:

That's awesome Gecko! I have both of you a thumbs up. Why? Because it gives me some hope. Anyway, the best mine has done for me is to put up with me asking a thousand questions through online chat.

The best thing a hosting company can do for me or anyone is provide me with a great customer service/ support!

5-6 year ago I received hoodie and a scarf from hosting company with Holiday greetings and 2 years ago they accepted my application for a job.

Gave me access to account backups after my account was terminated. Was in a real bad situation, the host just terminated my account, due to several issues with accounts being spammers(not my fault) After talking with them, they granted me access to the site backups so I could move the good accounts to another provider.

They did not have to do this, but I was very grateful they did.

They have transferred my account from the old hosting for free

The nicest thing a hosting company did for me was before I decided to run my own web hosting business - I had a VPS and the disk space / RAM was nearly used up without me even realising it, so they upgraded the VPS free of charge.