How often does your web host go down?

Every fortnight, without fail....

[gsx]

Last weekend but one, no service for three days. Down again today, no emails all day, and now no FTP.

How often should you expect a host to go down? And has anybody ever got any compensation?

[brotherhood of LAN]

Not often.

They have a guarantee where you get $ back if they ever go below 98%...which yeah is low, but its gonna keep them on their toes...

I don't have specific numbers, but I know my uptime is higher than 99%, as are most I think, and that it harder 'ever' goes down. (touch wood)

[Napoleon]

That's very poor. I'd certainly be looking to change ISP (assuming I had control of the domain name). I've just bought more hosting today, and one of the things I looked for was some track record of reliability. There are forums based on just that sort of topic out there.

[JayC]

It should almost never happen. Especially for more than a few minutes, and if it happens for more than that a respectable hosting company will contact customers to notify them, and then afterwards to explain what happened -- or at least make that kind of information available.

But are you sure that is what is happening? That is, that you're not seeing the effect of a connectivity problem somewhere between you and your host? You should, if you haven't done so, run a traceroute to see exactly where the problem is occurring. If it is within your host's network, and it happens regularly, I'd start shopping around.

[choster]

An even more important metric than total downtime is downtime during peak usage hours-- is your site available when your audience is looking for it?

Say you're a market commentary site and your busiest traffic is during NYSE trading hours. It does you no good to have 99.99% reliability on the weekends, or weeknights, but have regular outages for hours at a time during the day. By the same token, a small hosting shop might do several hours of maintenance when it is night in your time zone, but you'd never know it.

What you describe is unacceptable for any site. I'd look over your contract, compare the level of service that is supposed to be provided for the amount of bandwidth you are serving, and see if you could demand an explanation and compensation. And then, look for a new host.

[olwen]

My hosting is giving me a free month (their initiative) for uptime around 99%

[richlowe]

Went with one paid host, was great for a while, then up and down constantly. Switched, same story. Switched 12 times, same story. Went to dedicated server in NY (I'm in Cal) and it was fine, except down for 6 days solid with no explanation or even ack. Finally brought it in-house (literally) and run my own servers. Now totally happy, 100% up-time except for reboots due to upgrades and such.

Richard Lowe

[Thors Hammer]

If I were you, I would definetely be asking them some questions, and demanding serious explanations. Find out what their 'pipe' line is in, is this a small business (maybe even in home), did you go there personally and sign up, or just over phone and never see anyone or their office? (that is assuming you are going with someone local).

Find out what their 'redundancy' is..

If the answers to any of these questions seem 'weak', you should really consider going elsewhere.

Thor

[gsx]

Yes, it is definately them going down and not my end. In April they decided to change servers to a "more reliable" type. BTInternet, which supplys over 50% of UK connections (mainly through other companies) cache the IP address, which they changed. It took over a week for BTInternet to update, making it look to more than half of the population that my site didn't exist.

Anyway it repeatedly went down, until they finally admitted that the server was to blame, so they got a new one. That was another three days downtime as they swapped that over. Lost all emails, no web service. And then again, yesterday all emails lost (including orders - they are on WorldPay, but I have no idea what people have ordered) and FTP access was blocked.

Never get an explanation, unless I call them.

I chose them because they were a local firm at a low cost. Weeks afterward they got bought over by a firm about 150 miles away. Their support "is well known for their freindlyness and efficient service" or so the web site states.

Since April, I cannot upload any file if it already exists on the server. To update a file I have to delete it, upload it and set it's attributes (all manually) for each and every file. Their staff have been useless.

Thanks for your replies.

[hayluke]

If I were you I'd move the site ASAP, I don't expect 100% uptime but I expect it to be close.

Have a look at the major internet magazines, most of them have charts showing the top performing ISPs..

[JayC]

Have a look at the major internet magazines, most of them have charts showing the top performing ISPs..

Be careful with those, or listings online on web host directories -- be sure you understand the criteria for listing. Many of those are simply pay-for-position lists.

[Crazy_Fool]

>>Have a look at the major internet magazines, most of them have
>>charts showing the top performing ISPs

i wouldnt count on those to be accurate - some are paid placings and some companies keep a single server specially for those "repeated ping" tests. hardly accurate ...

i wouldn't count on recommendations from forums either. some companies have lots of usernames on forums and when someone says "hey, what host should i use", they recommend themselves several times under different usernames.

i provide hosting and the only downtime i've had in well over a year is for reboots after upgrades / patches etc. i don't offer guarantees as 12 months hosting is cheaper than a good night out and the time it takes to deal with people who would try and claim their 7p for 24 hours downtime just wouldn't be worth the effort.

i can't please everyone all of the time. people want cheap so i give them cheap. if i lose a few people that want guarantees, then no problem. if the majority of people want guarantees, i'll give them guarantees, but i'll have to charge them a rate that makes it worthwhile for them to complain about downtime and for me to deal with any complaints. of course, that means throwing away the majority of customers that want cheap hosting.

my own advice - if you want cheap hosting, take whatever's available. if you want a recommendation, take one from someone you know personally, not from one or two replies in a forum. if you suffer downtime, don't waste your time hassling your host, just move on. demanding compensation from your host is most likely a waste of time - you'll never get more than you paid them in the first place.

if your site is vital, ie a business site that provides your only income, don't use really cheap hosting. seriously consider getting your own servers and either colocating them with a big company or getting a decent pipe to your home to host them at home where you can keep an eye on them.