Hi,

I'm working on a deal with a customer and got to the point when we are deciding how much we should cut from the invoice per day of downtime.

What is standard?

help!

thanks.

From what I have ever seen or used it is usually on a % basis. For instance if over a month your uptime is below 99.5% you get a % off the bill or something. But you set the uptime % guarantee and when you go below that over a month you tell them how much you will credit them..

But how much off the bill?

Just a guess here, but I would offer a discount in proportion with the amount of downtime.
For example: You charge $30 per month for hosting, there are 30 days in the month and you were down for one day.
$30/30 days = 1 dollar per day
1 dollar per day * amount of downtime = amount of discount

This is all assuming that you don't have a uptime guarantee whereby if the service is not up for a certain amount of time the month is free.

When my utilities are out for short periods of time, I still get charged the full price, so do you really have to give a refund for a small outage? I'd say you don't have to, unless the clients ask for one.

Really depends. Some companies have it that if they don't reach their uptime guarantee they give the next month free. While others have it in incremental stages. Where if they reach a certain downtime mark they credit a certain amount and if they reach another downtime mark they credit a higher amount.

Originally posted by d_l0rd
Hi,

what is standard to cut from an invoice when downtime occurs? What is standard to offer?


Thanks There is no standard when it comes to refunds / credits....Its entirely up to you. If you do claim to give a refund / credit for downtime you need to be able to stick too it.

Well said Greg. Basically it depends on what is in your TOS as far as credits go. Make a decision, put it in your TOS and stick with it. My personal advice though, if you are going to have an uptime guarantee, make it realistic. I don't remember the exact calculation, but a 99.999% uptime guarantee only allows something like 25mins of downtime per month. On the off change you need to do 2 kernel updates per month, you can't even reboot your machines.

Just something to think about.

nah I'm thinking of offering like a 10% cut per day that it is down. Also state that planned downtime for maintenence sthat is scheduled cannot affect the invoice.

Originally posted by d_l0rd
nah I'm thinking of offering like a 10% cut per day that it is down. Also state that planned downtime for maintenence sthat is scheduled cannot affect the invoice.

Per Day that it is down? If you have a server down for days at a time you will have a hard time keeping many clients around...

So what would be an easy deal that is good for me?

Originally posted by Haddy
There is no standard when it comes to refunds / credits....Its entirely up to you. If you do claim to give a refund / credit for downtime you need to be able to stick too it.

no cut at all. do your ISP cut you a check when your dsl or cable went down? if the downtime happened more than a day or two then maybe but if only for few hours....NO!

If you get downtime enough to worry about it you should be looking for a new server provider first =/

Originally posted by d_l0rd
So what would be an easy deal that is good for me?
Something along the lines of:

95% to 99.X% 10%
90% to 94.9% 20%
89.9% or below 50%

Anything below that, and I'm afraid you're looking at cancellation, not a credit request.

A 99.9% uptime guarantee will give you approximately 44.x minutes of downtime per month.

Simon

You shouldn't give a refund for small downtimes that are just for a few minutes or an hour at least. But downtimes that last a whole day, I would divide the total bill by how many days are in that much and give that off.

wow didnt realise it was around those figures

thanks for the info

Originally posted by jt2377
no cut at all. do your ISP cut you a check when your dsl or cable went down? if the downtime happened more than a day or two then maybe but if only for few hours....NO!
Most will do, for business accounts.

For instance, our provider (EastLink) credits us for any period longer than 45 (albeit sustained) minutes of network unavailability, as we have a business account with them.

I don't believe they have the same policy for residential broadband though.

Simon

Originally posted by jt2377
no cut at all. do your ISP cut you a check when your dsl or cable went down? if the downtime happened more than a day or two then maybe but if only for few hours....NO! Ive also never seen a teleco claim any kind of uptime guarantee either....

Originally posted by Haddy
Ive also never seen a teleco claim any kind of uptime guarantee either....

And this is the key....if you offer it, be prepared to honour it. Otherwise, don't offer one and simply provide a good service.

I, personally, disagree with gghosting...if you have downtimes that last a whole day, that's simply unacceptable. Guarantee or not, I think credit would be due if this occurred.