Had a big "discussion" relating to uptime on the powweb forums. Powwebs position is that they consider themselves "up" as long as their router can see the internet. Doesn't matter if all or their servers are down or not. 99.7% uptime advertised does not mean your website or email will be working 99.7% of the time. Is this the way that most web hosting companies figure uptime?
I'm fairly happy with the service right now but I think 99.7% uptime is misleading.

Here is a link to the forum.... Read the "Anyone have "real" uptime stats?" thread.

http://forum.powweb.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=23&daysprune=30&sortorder=&sortfield=lastpost&perpage=25&pagenumber=2

My comments are not directed to Powweb the host, but to an SLA. So replace Powweb with HostXYZ........

If I am reading this correctly, I find this cheesy! I guess they don't have enough faith in their servers and admins to include web servers. I have never seen an SLA like this for web hosting. You should get a 100% uptime if they just use routers. They call this redundancy. I know later they say for their entire network, but they still judge this by their router uptime.


The key thing with any SLA is that it is not a guaranteed uptime anyway. They are just saying that they strive to maintain that percentage. If they do not, then their customers are *compensated*. The issue with their SLA is that it includes one peice of the whole puzzle and the peice that it includes should be the easiest to keep. If you are concerned about SLAs, then find one who puts the guarantee as it relates to your site. Another words, the guarantee states they will keep your web site up 99.7% and if they do not, you will be refunded x amount. (Of course maintenance, hacks, and others outside the host control issues will be excluded.)


PS - I just loved this comment from the owner to one of their own mods -

Mike, if you feel our practices are “misleading”, perhaps you shouldn’t be a moderator.

:rolleyes:

It's not possible for a host to accurately monitor itself internally. I can guarantee you 100% uptime on the server you're on using a tool I place on that server... go figure :)

We use internetseer (http://www.internetseer.com) to track our uptime. It was actually found out by mistake, many of our clients have been using it for months and we were wondering where all the hits were coming from to multiple sites on our server. Very good system for figuring uptime as you the client sees it.

-Matt

Originally posted by jkonecn
I'm fairly happy with the service right now but I think 99.7% uptime is misleading.

Why would you expect a spammer like Powweb to be honest about anything?

-MS-

They've been honest about it. They just have a very poor definition of uptime.

Powweb is just a bunch of spammers, I emailed their sales department when I got 4 yesterday. You guessed it, I haven't heard back, never expect to.

I am not surprised that their definition of uptime is that, being that they send me emails like:


Discount Web Hosting! - only $7.77/month!


200 MB, Yourname.com, 12 Gigs Transfer, 100 POP Accounts,
Control Panel,Cgi-Bin, FTP, PHP4, MYSQL, SSL,Frontpage support,
SSL, FREE SETUP and MORE!!


Click Here.




with a topic of "re:your website"

Companies like this should be forced out of business by people that get their spam.

Spamming and downtime aside it's a pretty decent deal. Who compares?

Many compare, I think morals are important, and I believe spamming is immoral.

Seriously... I don't think I've seen a better deal. Gimme an url.

Sure, there are many URLs, just spend a few hours here and you will even find some reputable companies that beat that deal, that don't spam.

Of course you will also find crappy companies here that do spam, but read the replies and you will know about them.

Originally posted by jkonecn
Seriously... I don't think I've seen a better deal. Gimme an url.

Umm you could give me 1 gig and 30 gigs of transfer and I still would nit sign up with a company with such rude owners, crappy SLA's and spammers. Those are the companies that we will be saying in a year or so "Hey what happened to XYZHost remember all there SPAM". As far as that offer I would say that that is about the average offer going around.. Go to the hosting offers forum and you will see posts with double that for the same price.. Once you get bounced around enough you will realize that sometimes it's worth that extra buck or two and month and that bigger is not always better..

Originally posted by RackNine
It's not possible for a host to accurately monitor itself internally. I can guarantee you 100% uptime on the server you're on using a tool I place on that server... go figure :)

We use internetseer (http://www.internetseer.com) to track our uptime. It was actually found out by mistake, many of our clients have been using it for months and we were wondering where all the hits were coming from to multiple sites on our server. Very good system for figuring uptime as you the client sees it.

-Matt

The POWWEB owners don't think so. :rolleyes: This is from their Forums and what they are telling their customers.

FYI: InternetSeer is notoriously wrong in its reporting.

Originally posted by jkonecn
Spamming and downtime aside it's a pretty decent deal. Who compares?

Spamming aside? :eek:

Over the past month, I have been bombarded with a dozen of their spam messages on several different email accounts. Nothing personal, but how can you even say "spamming aside"? :confused:

:uzi: Spammers

I guess I just feel rather strongly on this subject. :)

It was a request for a comparison of services. Simple as that. Forget about spam and compare the
numbers. After you're done with the numbers then you can factor in spam if you wish. I don't like the 30+ spams I get a day either but dollars for features they are a good deal. I get many more spams from china each day than anywhere. Maybe we should pull the plug on china.

I am not sure you get the point it is:

"Seek and ye shall find."

We can not make you change your mind.
If you like them, fine, I don't.

And if you want to compare you will need to put your request in the right forum as advertising here is not allowed.

I like the features/price of powweb. I don't like spam. I like my money.

Just a couple of personal observations about the original question (uptime, and how do you define it):

Having had a few sites at Powweb I can testify that if my site was reachable 99.7% of the time on any given day, it was a lot better day than usual. More usual is to find that it is not reachable, has not been for a couple of hours, and likely will not be until 9:00 a.m. PDT on Monday morning, unless it's a holiday. 9:30, if there are more than the usual hundred or so complaints to delete from the friendly public forums. Those, of course, must be quickly deleted before the problem is attended to.

I am currently enjoying a remarkably "up" experience with the best web host I have ever had--and I've had a few--who, when asked in his public forums what his uptime guarantee was, just came right out and said, "We don't have an uptime guarantee."

If you have one, you must define it, and in doing so you will piss off at least half of your customers. On the other hand, if you personally see to it that your customers' services are available 24X7 unless there is unavoidable maintenance required, and you send e-mail in advance of scheduled interruptions, then 99.7% of your customers will be happy customers.

None of which has anything to do with making money. Although one might argue that it should.

Originally posted by UmBillyCord
PS - I just loved this comment from the owner to one of their own mods -

Mike, if you feel our practices are “misleading”, perhaps you shouldn’t be a moderator.

Hence the reason I'm no long a moderator there or a customer for that matter :D PowWeb is a :bomb: waiting to explode!

:D

who are you with Tom Brown ?

Susanna,

FCSNC.COM is currently hosted--along with a dozen or so other domains--at ... FCSNC.COM :rolleyes:

... a Splash Host reseller.

nice yabb

I've had Powweb for a little over a year and I have to say, I wish I could find better but there are so many places to host!

They are cheap and they offer a lot but the tech support is slow to respond and they tend to put problems off as user errors. Forget dependable mail forwarding.

I have a bunch of web sites to host and frankly, at 20.00 a month it's a bit much when I'm not in need of more than powweb offers so I have to ask, for everyone that mentioned a great host they are with, who are they?

-X.