How to Deal with Minor Downtime

[Livenomadic]

I host my sites with an amazing host... really awesome customer service, prices, speed, extras..

They have been perfect...

However, lately I've been noticing once every few days that my sites (all of them using that hosting) will go down for 1-5 minutes.

They did not talk about this in the scheduled maintence.

Is there a program that will let me track when my site is up or down in real time? I would like to present the customer service people will some hard facts about the downtimes (dates and times).

[keyplyr]

There are several free/paid services that will ping your site every 15 or 30 minutes or so, giving somewhat detailed reports. Some will even connect from varied remote locations to overule hub jams. Google for "site monitoring" or similar KWs.

[txbakers]

Downtime is a reality of the web business. Storefronts have to deal with power outages and snow storms, you have to deal with network glitches and other outages.

I wouldn't even mention them to customers. It happens.

I provide a web based service and when people ask about "downage" I just tell them the truth - it happens, it's out of my control, and when it does happen we work furiously to get it back up. I also tell them in the last year it was down a total of 28 minutes.

Sometimes people are wise***** about it, using that as an excuse not to buy. I tell them that their local computer crashes more often than my network.

[Livenomadic]

Thanks guys,

My concern isn't really that it is going down once in a while, it is rather that it might be the tip of the ice-berg. I do not check my site too often, and if every few days I stumble onto a downtime it might actually be down for much longer other times in the day.

[longen]

Try checking your log stats - any gaps in the average hourly numbers for those days.

[onlineleben]

Try checking your log stats - any gaps in the average hourly numbers for those days.

The same do I.
One of my sites has developed a perfect curve of visitors, starting slowly in the morning and increasing over the day, having its peak around noon and early afternoon and traffic slowing down in the evening and nightly hours.
This pattern is disrupted when certain things happen:
- football
- formula 1
- holidays that are on a weekday
- good weather

All the above I know about (usually), so when there is a deviation from the optimal pattern, then something had happened to the server.
Usually it is me who informs the hosting company (a small, but reliable one) about any glithes in the morning. I send a fax because usually when my server is down, my email is down as well.
Downtime has never been an issue between my hosting comp. and me as I know they are really working hard on their end and also give support for things that you either don't get or have to pay for with other companies.
If you have a collection of times when your server was down, why not just email them the data so they can investigate. sometimes they don'
t even know that something went wrong or it could be some hint for coming problems.

[spinmasterpro]

If you had a building that housed your prized possessions, wouldn't you pay someone to watch it for you?

If your e-business is important, you should consider using a paid remote monitoring service.

With a free service, you get what you pay for.

There are several monitoring services out there and the prices range from reasonable to ridiculous.

To find companies, do a search for "remote website monitoring."

The key is flexibility. Does the company offer service levels and options that meet your exact needs, or do they force you to take predetermined service bundles that have features you don't need or want?