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One thing we try to do with Internet Business Mastery is to help you find the right services to use with your internet business based on our own experiences. For the most part we have recommended things that you SHOULD use. Well, this time I want to tell you about a service you SHOULD NOT use. I’ll also share some important lessons you can learn from my experience.

When I launched my first information product site I needed a hosting service (or services) that would provide me with:

• The ability to host multiple sites on one hosting account
• A shopping cart to interface with my merchant account
• Email list management
• Auto responders
• Affiliate sales management
• Excellent support

After days of researching and asking for referrals, I settled on using Third Sphere Hosting. They had all the features I was looking for, a very “internet marketing”-centric platform and endorsements from good sources. I was happy with their service for a few years, but since the beginning of this year, things have gone seriously downhill.

The biggest problem is that they don’t have phone support. They have a ticketed support system where you log in, leave your question and they get back to you within 24 hours (supposedly). The ticketed support worked for a long time, but as of a few months ago I never get a response.

Lesson #1: Never manage part of your internet business with a service that doesn’t let you pick up the phone and get quality support right away.

Two days before PodCamp NYC we couldn’t send critical information out to our list, because Third Sphere wasn’t working. I couldn’t get anyone to reply to me. Just this morning I sent and email out to my podcasting list. Thousands of people got nothing but a string of garbled letters from me in their inbox. Why? I don’t know. And I can’t get anyone from ThirdSphere to reply.

Lesson #2: Something will go wrong eventually and it will happen at the most inopportune time. Count on it. Be prepared. This is another reason why phone support is so important.

One of the reasons I signed up for Third Sphere in the beginning was that they had very reasonable prices and lots of features. Compared to the other leading services Third Sphere would save me about 50%. Now, I’m not just a “go with the lowest bidder” kind of guy, but such a good deal with good endorsements led me to jump and sign up.

Lesson #3: Be willing to spend the money necessary to set things up right.

So why have I hesitated to switch services? Why have I given them the benefit of the doubt? One of main reasons is that I don’t want to transfer my email lists over to another service. Any worthwhile email management service is very careful about letting people import lists from other sources. This is to prevent abuse of their system by spammers. It’s also for the sake of their other customers. The more abuse that occurs on a service, the more internet service and email providers will block any email from that service.

I know that in importing my list to another service I’ll probably have to send out an email to my current list asking them to opt-in again. Naturally this will reduce the size of my list. But really, it will just be a “cleaning” of my list. Yes, the total number of subscribers will be smaller, but the ones that stay on the list will be the most interested and responsive readers.

Lesson #4: Don’t be afraid to clean your list. Sure, the “ego-boosting” total size of your list will shrink, but the subscribers who matter the most will stick around.

Here are the services that I recommend and plan to use:

1ShoppingCart (email list management, auto responders, shopping cart, affiliate management and more)

Aweber (email list management and auto responders if you don’t need a shopping cart)

Globat (hosting that allows multiple sites on one account)

I feel like I’ve probably ranted enough, but for those still reading, here’s the list of my other grievances with Third Sphere:

• When I exported my database, only half the info was downloaded in a spreadsheet
• I tried everything I could to contact them without a response (support ticket, email, phone # on my credit card bill, etc.)
• In the last few years they haven’t increased storage or bandwidth limits despite the fact that the rest of the industry has
• The email system has embedded the wrong first name for a given email in the database
• They have sent emails that weren’t encoded right leading to garbage hitting people’s inbox with my name on it
• There system would tell me that a broadcast email had been sent when in fact it had not

I’m not sure what happened to Third Sphere. I was happy with them at one time, but things have gone seriously downhill. I won’t trust my business to a service that does not maintain quality or answer their support requests. Hopefully my experience will help you avoid similar problems.

Lesson #5: If you are using a service and start to see serious deterioration in service quality, jump ship sooner than later. Don’t let “giving the benefit of the doubt” hurt your business.

Lesson #6: Stay away from Third Sphere Hosting.