We occasionly get requests to restore web sites that cusotmers have hopelessly messed up and they don't have a back up.
Right now we restore for free...

do you charge? And if so, how much?
Deja

i dont think you should charge people

One of the reasons i found most people choose a host is because you provide daily backup

If you said we provide daily backup but you can only use it if you pay $20 do you think they would choose to host with you?



And if it is only every so often what is the big deal about charging them i can see if they need it restored everyday
But not every once in a while

My 2 cents


Thanks

i see backups as having two functions

function A is that us, the hosts, backup incase we loose a drie or something dies.... that way we're not loosing our clients data. if this is your backups, explain them as this much and if you restore anything charge

funciton B is that hosts offer a backup as part of the service. if you say nightly backups included, and dont explain that means backups for system failure only you better provide those backups. like volumehost said, people pay for your features, you cna't charge more for something you already included

my method is simply to keep backups but not advertise it... within a few faq pages its mentioned but i dont want people calling me for their missing gif file from the week before last.... i guess its a way to make money, not something i like doing though

What I did was set up a cron job to create a tar of their public_html folder every friday and place it in a password protected directory. If they want the service turned off, they can in cpanel, but no one has yet. I suggest they keep a copy of thier file, and let them know where they can download the weekly copy. This means I don't have to become the 1st line when they accidentally delete a small image or want to restore the last copy of their homepage. Hopefully, the folks that still can't figure it out will be so minimal, I will never have to worry about it becoming a chargable event.

That being said, when I had a site at *****, they would charge...(50$ US) for a restore (as many files as you wanted).

I dont see the point in charging for it what does it take 2 or 3 minutes to restore a file

not that big of a deal plus in CPanel there is a place were the user can do it all by there self but every now and then i get a call from a customer asking for me to do this but i never even thought about charging them for 2 minutes of my time


Thanks
Daniel

um, even more scary though is that the user does not have a copy of their site. I mean...the world of backups is great, and usually reliable, but things happen, and the backup may not work, be available for whatever reason....

I would not charge either, but I think maybe (just maybe) the user will learn how important their data is too...clients want fast support, and they want the lowest prices (generally) and they want the most uptime. Well, if you spend a lot of time with 2 minute restores, I guess it could prevent you from keeping prices low, offering quick service and watching out for stuff that would cause downtime. I understand that rationale....but I definitely disagree with it.

cpanel does let users back up their sites -- how many do. What I did was defintely a gimmick to show how serious backups are. If it keeps one person from asking me to restore a file, then that's two extra minutes I can be working for them resolving the bigger stuff, or answering their call faster, which they will appreciate more than a backup. I am much more for prevention than punishment ;-)

I dont see the point in charging for it what does it take 2 or 3 minutes to restore a file

When you host 1000s of sites, this is not a 2 minute job. If a customer deletes their files and does not have a back up, we charge $30.00 to find and restore. This is because our techs could be working on other things besides restoring something that should of been backed-up in the first place by the person who lost the files.

i have 874 customers i know ow hard it gets at times
my tech support staff cant handle it sometimes so things slow down

So i understand where you are coming from


Thanks
Daniel

It could definitely take more than a few minutes to restore just a select a site, or even just a select file, depending on your backup method.

We don't currently charge for it, and are building it into our control panel so that users can restore files from the backup the night before by themself.

Like ted, we don't advertise that we can do it for free. We really are only doing backups in case of hardware failure, not as an archival method for our customers.

It is a good idea to remind them of this when you do a restore for them, so that they know the importance of keeping their own archive.

IMHO, a good method would be to allow users x number of restores done by you or your tech staff. Say one restore per month, and then charge for more. This will keep people from abusing the service, but will allow for the people that have a little screw up here and there, a quick fix. This would be my recomendation, and as a customer, I would be happy with that.

$ 50.- for a site restore. Customers are urged to keep a copy of their site on their harddrive at-all-times! Basically it's their site, their data and we are not responsible for what they do with it.

Techs don't come cheap these days and restores cost time and money. I'ld say $ 50.- about covers the cost.

The price is a) to cover our cost and b) to make sure we are not overloaded with restore requests. When people have to pay they suddenly become a lot less careless with their data.

A strategy that works. Restore requests during the last six months: 0

I wouldn't charge my customers for a data recovery. But when it happens often then I should. So basicly what I do is charge a certain amount. And give the same amount as reduction. (then the customers are happy). And when it happens often the reduction becomes less.

That's how I do it.