Vote Suggestions to Improve Dreamhost Web Hosting

Just received the amusing Dreamhost Newsletter v8.12 December 2006 and they pointed me to the Suggestions area (needs login) where you can suggest and vote for features in different categories to help improve Dreamhost web hosting.

The first thing that struck me was how were they going to determine the priority of these suggestions and importantly prevent spam voting. So these bright guys thought of that too. Suggestions cost credits, based on how difficult they feel they are to implement. All DreamHost customers with an active hosting plan have 40 total credits. You can use your credits to vote once per suggestion, either for or against it and votes influence what gets implemented on priority. If a suggestion you voted on is implemented, you will be notified and those credits become available again. You can remove or change your votes at any time.

Lots of suggestions are being posted and voting is on. An easy way to wade through all those suggestion and spend your credits the right way is to filter the suggestions by category through the drop down form.

The category I voted for most was Contact Support (needs login) which has some good suggestions for better support like allow replying to support via the panel (not just by email), allow international callbacks, offer free 24/7 phone support on all plans, and have live person chat available all the time.

I was impressed with their new year resolutions and now they are open to suggestions! Another reason to like Dreamhost.