I just filled out a customer satisfaction survey for my hosting provider, ORCSWeb, which makes me think I should probably write a little something here in my blog about how much I like them. I’ve been using ORCSWeb’s services for what seems like forever, but off the top of my head I’d have to say at least since 2000. Before switching to them, I had used a couple of other hosting providers, all of which have since been bought up or gone out of business, as far as I know. However, the difference back then was like night and day. With the other hosters I was having to walk their sysadmins through the steps of setting things up, installing COM objects, etc. With ORCSWeb, they knew what to do and they did it and did it right.

Another thing that has always set ORCSWeb apart, in my mind, is the number of “rockstar” employees they have. They have several MVPs (or former MVPs) on their staff, including Scott Forsyth who is amazing with anything related to IIS and hosting and Steve Schofield, who founded and built ASPFree.com before going to work at ORCSWeb, and who remains an ubergeek.

Strangely enough, in the middle of writing this entry, I received an IM from Steve Schofield letting me know there was a problem with one of my servers. Apparently an FTP upload I made half an hour ago puked in mid-file and was causing the app to fail. Actually, I got IMs from two ORCSWeb staff as well as about a dozen emails all notifying me of the problem. Had I not been online, I’m confident they would have found a way to correct the issue without my intervention (they’ve done it before), but as it happened I was able to re-upload the file and fix the issue. One thing I’ve always been impressed with is the speed with which I can get a response from ORCSWeb staff. Usually emails are answered within minutes, day or night.

One last thing I’ve always loved about ORCSWeb is that, since they have so many sharp people on staff, they’re generally able to support the latest and greatest technologies very early and very well. You can count on them to have the latest beta or CTP of ASP.NET available as early as possible, and they’re great about upgrading applications as newer CTPs/Betas/RTMs come available. This might have something to do with their great relationship with the ASP.NET team, who by the way trusts them to run their official web site as well as several other Microsoft sites.