I’ve spent the last couple months and especially the last couple weeks as it intensified in what I painfully like to refer to as living in the dregs of Web Hosting Hell. I will spare you most of the gory details and will not name names but let’s just say the hosting company I used before was shady, unresponsive, and towards the end, downright abusive and deceitful. I got tired of waiting 3 days, 11 emails, 4 IM’s, and 3 phone calls later and no support. I would open ticket after ticket explaining in length my issues and I would get a one line response back that made no sense and not answer my question. On the rare occasion that I would get someone on the phone, they sounded like they were stoned.

I am a Blogger not a developer, crack coder, or any sort of tech whiz. Put me in front of a computer and I want to write, post cute pictures, throw up a couple links, and run my contest. I don’t want to come home after a 12 hour day and have to troubleshoot issues and teach myself script and code until my eyes bleed….I know how to use Moveable Type software, edit templates, etc but I don’t know nor do I have the time or desire to learn how to convert Berkeley Databases to MYSQL, or change root directory paths, configuration settings, etc. etc. This has been my dilemma and why I was stuck where I was for too long.

Cut to, the day last week when I had enough. I searched and navigated through the endless selection of web hosting companies. After a weekend of phone calls with bitter, clueless sales reps and customer support specialists, I was left disappointed and disillusioned at my prospects.

I put the feelers out to folks in the Moveably Type community who also operate MT Blogs, I posted on the forums, opened more support tickets, emailed blog designers, searched sixapart hosting partners, only to sign up for one and find out after they charged my monthly fee that their MT Blog manager was still in BETA mode and still ironing out some “bugs” and they offered no support for the product! UGH, this on top of last minute wedding details, family gatherings, crippling neck pain, bla bla bla. I won’t lie to you, it looked bleak and at one point I considered starting over from scratch and switching to a free Blogger account.

Then it came, the email I’d been waiting for. A referral from a blog friend:

“You might want to check out Living Dot. Pavel is great! Fast, friendly and he's Mr. Movable Type. I bet he or his team can assist with your needs. www.livingdot.com. You can let him know we sent you. He's a peach!”

I knew I was in business straight away. I submitted my first pre sales inquiry on April 3rd and by April 5th Living Dot had completely migrated my entire site, contents of old server, database convert, etc etc to their servers and even installed and upgraded me to a new MT version all before my Domain Name Servers had switched to theirs!! They also took the time and had the patience to answer all of my questions and explain things to me step by step that I didn’t understand, so they now make sense.

These guys are fast, friendly, and have a superior customer service ethic. Best of all they KNOW Moveable Type!! There hasn’t been one support ticket I’ve submitted that I’ve waited more than 20 minutes for a response. Some I receive in 2 minutes and I have to blink my eyes in disbelief. It’s the total opposite of what I’ve been used to dealing with.

Listen up – If anyone out there is looking for a new hosting company, Living Dot is the best that I’ve found, the best I can imagine. It just can’t get any better. My only regret is that I didn't find them sooner.

I am totally stoked about having them for my new host, and in case you missed it, still doing the Happy Pug Dance!