Yet another time where I'm going to go with a product because of a great but simple customer service experience.

In a previous post I described my dilemma of choosing a PHP graphing library for use with HelpSpot. It was pretty easy to narrow it down to 2 choices because that's really all there is!

A Flash library: http://www.maani.us/charts/index.php

and

JpGraph: http://www.aditus.nu/jpgraph/

While I obviously prefer the looks of the Flash library there were some downsides because the graphs could not always be printed and are impossible to save out because they are embedded within the movie. JpGraph is used many places and hence is well tested, but requires different builds for PHP4 and PHP5.

I had some questions for the builders of both libraries. I sent off an email to the Flash library creator. That was a week ago and still no response. I also sent an email to the JpGraph folks. I received a response back in less than 5 minutes. To me that's a huge benefit. It gives a comforting feeling on multiple fronts. First, that there's help nearby if needed. Second, it gives the impression at least that they'll be around tomorrow. If the other guy can't get back to me after a week maybe he won't ever get back to me. Maybe he's not even around anymore, who knows?

In any event JpGraph will be getting my $784.7399 (at the current exchange rate, heh).