HelpSpot finally has a formal hosting solution. I quickly linked to the new HelpSpot hosting provider the other day, but I wanted to do a more in depth post on the subject.

Over the last several months I've talked to several hosting companies and most either seemed like they wouldn't give my customers the level of service I require or they simply weren't interested in working with a software vendor in depth. Meaning they wouldn't install and maintain the application, which is really the type of offering I wanted to present to my customers.

In truth I was beginning to feel a bit down about the process and had really started to consider offering hosting myself, which I truly wanted to avoid if possible. Luckily, Giorgio of ValiantHost has stepped in and saved the day!

Giorgio has been great to work with over the past few weeks while we worked out the details and got things setup. ValiantHost is a small hosting company, which is exactly the type of shop I wanted to work with. I can already tell that his customer service is top notch. In addition, he's been providing this type of solution for FogBugz for some time now so he's got experience hosting and updating customer applications and working with product vendors.

ValiantHost has put together a great page about their HelpSpot hosting options which you can check out here: http://www.valianthost.com/helpspothosting.html.

The prices are very reasonable, especially considering the service they're providing. I think this is really going to open up some great new markets for HelpSpot. Potential customers without a hosting solution now have any easy option to deploy HelpSpot. Another large market is groups that just don't want to deal with their internal IT organizations. They now have a simple option for using HelpSpot without jumping through a bunch of IT hoops.

So begins another small step forward in the evolution of HelpSpot. Thanks ValiantHost!

Update: Giorgio dropped me a note to let me know that they've already got their first HelpSpot customer. That's a great way to start things off!