"Directing people to an online support tool" doesn't work super well for people who have problems using your online tool in the first place, or if the product i

"Directing people to an online support tool" doesn't work super well for people who have problems using your online tool in the first place, or if the product isn't a web site in the first place. Customer bases are different across products too. Also, neither Rackspace or 37signals have scaled well at all. I'm a customer of both, and it's been fascinating to watch the quality of their support decline the bigger they get. As for "factoring it into the price of your product", that's super silly thinking. Not all products have elasticity in their price, nor are all products capable of supporting both a company AND quality support. This is why so many founders end up doing support themselves.