hacksaw
12-23-2001, 09:32 PM
I have been a rackshack customer for 4 months. The first 3 months, the company performed perfectly. How nice it was to not have to worry about my server.
But the last month has been very difficult, as rackshack has been migrating to a new data center. We began experiencing frequent connectivity issues, sometimes for just a few minutes, sometimes for an hour or two. But enough to disrupt the sessions of all the users connected to our site. We've had to cancel several of our events, and have seen our resources (whcih could otherwise be doing productive things) being shifted to supporting our users who dont understand why they cant connect. We held our breath, hoping it would all go away after the migration.
Well, the migration is over, and the problems remain. As I write this, we are experiencing another outage. I understand outages happen, but every company has their thresholds of how much downtime they can take, and ours has been surpassed.
It is so painful, because for 3 months I LOVED rackshack, and a part of me is really rooting for them because I respect their ambition. But performance matters too, and just like its not smart to hold onto a tumbling stock just cuz you happen to love the company, its also not smart for my company to stick with rackshack any longer.
To our paying customers, downtime is downtime - they dont care who's fault it is, they blame us, and its our reputation that is affected. And thats the way it should be too - my company is only as reputable as the decisions it makes, and chosing rackshack as our host was our decision and we must remain accountable for it.
So, even tho I would like to believe that everything will be back to normal at rackshack after we get through the current outage, it just doenst seems like thats a safe bet for my company anymore, which is why we have decided to switch hosts.
Just a lesson for all you hosts out there - you need to be careful how you grow. If growing means compromising the value you've created for your current customers, then you can expect to lose customers.
But the last month has been very difficult, as rackshack has been migrating to a new data center. We began experiencing frequent connectivity issues, sometimes for just a few minutes, sometimes for an hour or two. But enough to disrupt the sessions of all the users connected to our site. We've had to cancel several of our events, and have seen our resources (whcih could otherwise be doing productive things) being shifted to supporting our users who dont understand why they cant connect. We held our breath, hoping it would all go away after the migration.
Well, the migration is over, and the problems remain. As I write this, we are experiencing another outage. I understand outages happen, but every company has their thresholds of how much downtime they can take, and ours has been surpassed.
It is so painful, because for 3 months I LOVED rackshack, and a part of me is really rooting for them because I respect their ambition. But performance matters too, and just like its not smart to hold onto a tumbling stock just cuz you happen to love the company, its also not smart for my company to stick with rackshack any longer.
To our paying customers, downtime is downtime - they dont care who's fault it is, they blame us, and its our reputation that is affected. And thats the way it should be too - my company is only as reputable as the decisions it makes, and chosing rackshack as our host was our decision and we must remain accountable for it.
So, even tho I would like to believe that everything will be back to normal at rackshack after we get through the current outage, it just doenst seems like thats a safe bet for my company anymore, which is why we have decided to switch hosts.
Just a lesson for all you hosts out there - you need to be careful how you grow. If growing means compromising the value you've created for your current customers, then you can expect to lose customers.