ContentRobot once had a favorite host that we recommended to all our clients: Pair Networks. They were reasonable … wonderfully responsive … easy to use … Then …

A client’s blog was partially down, meaning you could see the site content but not the theme or the CSS. What happened? Where was the warning email that we were promised last time? Did they turn off services? Who could help us during this crises? ACK!

Then after 3 separate phone calls to find out what was going on, came this stellar response from tech support:

Sorry we don’t support WordPress and we can’t help you to get your site working …

Then our (now irate) client contacted Pair himself. He had to escalate the call to finally get the answers and resolution needed to get him up and running. (Yes, your site’s services were throttled and, no, you were not contacted correctly during this process.)

While we continued to politely ignore the banner ad on the Pair Networks control panel touting another (in our eyes, sub-par) blog platform, this blatant statement became a (sore) tipping point for us that we can no longer ignore.

We believe that hosts should support multiple major blogging platforms where clients have a choice (like selecting between a Windows or Unix environment). Is platform/application neutrality more appropriate for a hosting company? Should WordPress try harder to create relationships with hosts so their blogging software can easily be installed and supported?