Now, this may be a big generalization, but I've come to find that with most free hosts I've tried, customer service is either very little or nonexistant. While I haven't needed to contact customer service for too many issues, I find it to be a very important aspect as to whether I choose that host or not.

Do paid hosting companies contain better customer service representatives or are some just the same as free hosts- slow, lazy, and at times, a bit rude?

I think it depends on the web hosting company you deal with, but I guess that generally paid hosting companies serve their customers better than the free ones do.

There are many hosting companies offering good support and are well-known for the same. Can you tell a reason for Free hosting provider support agents to be helpful or not being rude? Indeed, no. Because they are offering free services. If you really want the support to be co-operative, you should consider either of the reliable paid hosting provider.

I think you get a mix of good and bad at a lot of companies, but those providers that excel in customer support normally survive the test ot time - and have lower churn.

I've been to at least two paid hosting services and I'm happy with their customer service. For free ones (here i'm referring to blogger and wordpress), frankly I do not expecting any customer service. That's too much to ask. Besides, most of my questions are answered by their FAQ pages.

Did you really expect to get customer support from a free hosting provider. When it is "free" you can not expect to get any kind of support.

Yeah, that's true. Normally free hosting providers clearly state in their TOS that they provide the hosting service as it is. So, you can either accept their service as it is, or leave it.

Yes, generally one gets what one pays for - and when you aren't paying, you should be thankful for anything you get. That said, it's equally true that some inexpensive PAID hosts are not that great on support, either.

Free web hosting is cheap choice to enjoy the hosting experience,you needn't pay to the hosting provider. But it is very inconvenient to you when encounter some issues which are so urgent but hard. You can't ask for the technical support while you are enjoying free hosting.
After having the experience with webhosting,you might as well choose one paid hosting provider.
So I want to say,free webhosting is nice step before you start the important businesses.

I think you will probably get better customer service with a paid host over a free one, but there are bad paid services too. Steve is right, there are a mix of good and bad paid providers out there. Read some reviews out, test some companies out and you will find a good one.

I'm surprised it took this many replies before this response
But it's not to say that good support can't be found with free hosting; but the question is... why is it free? Unless they're cross-selling it with other 'paid' services.?.

There is a saying, better support means worse hosting. this generally means big companies outsource so you get support faster but they do not know much and the servers usually need a lot of support.

Yes you will definitely see an improvement, but be careful because any host that does not want to give support for even a free plan wont be a good option in the first place.

I used to operate a free cPanel host (oh, the joys) and stated there would be no support given.

Paid is hosting ... is like moving the richer area of the hosting suburbs, if you get my analogy there ...

You get what you pay for, for the most part... Now this doesn't mean that just because a provider is expensive that they will offer amazing support (it's more of a generalization than a rule).