Hello,
If a host gaurantees you uptime of 99% or better, what do you if it doesnt come true?

For example, my site has been down for over 36 hours now, and during this time I am losing visitors AND money from sponsors.

Should the host refund some of my money, the whole month, or whats the solution?

So far my host haasn't even responded to my emails yet, but thats most likely because his email is down since the shost website is down, too.

Depends on the hosts policy. Some offer a month free hosting, others offer prorated credits based on the difference between the guaranteed and actual uptime. You would have to read the TOS for this host to find out what exactly they offer as a remedy for not meeting the guarantee.

If you are down for 36 hours then you clearly have a web host that is not ready to conduct business.

Rather than concerning yourself with their uptime guarantee, you might be better off looking for a more reliable host. What use is a pro-rated rebate if your site is at risk of being down for such extended periods of time?

I think up time guarantees are generally useless. Clearly it is in the hosts best interest to ensure a stable operating environment. Successful hosts will do this through a combination of planning, proactive maintenance, technical design, and policies and procedures.

However, for what most users and resellers of hosting plans are willing to pay, how much can you reasonably expect? Things happen - outages will occur. Downtime itself isn't the only factor to measure, but how the hosting company deals with it.

Clearly being down for 36 hours indicates that the hosting company does not have sufficient substance to recover from major problems. Possibly their backup regime is bad. Possibly they run a single box and have no spares. Possibly they are lacking technical expertise. Possibly they are under capitalized and can not afford to bring up another server to transfer affected clients to. Who knows, but three days of downtime is a lot of time - given sufficient capital and technical ability, most anything can be accomplished in much less time.

Perhaps your hoster is undercapitalized because they offer much for very little. When things work, its easy to feel good about paying low fees for a service, but when things are not going well, suddenly low price service looks less attractive.

If you can't afford better hosting, and your business or site depends on revenue from visitors, then your own business plan is flawed.

ps, I hate popups, popunders, and generally any site that does things to my browser that I don't expect (like opening new windows when I am not clicking on a link). Your site - http://smashboards.com/ seems to delight in these tricks.

For downtime like that I would say either request atleast a month free prob 2 months as that is alot of downtime.. As far as looking for a new host I don't see any reason to look for a new host unless this is becoming a monthly thing.. Some people don't realize that NO ONE is perfect and that every company is going to have downtime sooner or later for whatever reason it may be. From the amount of time you have been down I would think it would mostlikely be something not under there control which as most of us know can happen.. Now if you find out that is was just a hard drive or a burnt power supply and it takes 36+ hours to replace that, well then yes it would be a good idea to start looking around.. good luck and hope they get you back online soon.

It is not that site I am talking about, and the popups are there temporarily to cover server costs for that site... Its not a business, its not a revnue making site, its a hobby for fun...


Anyway, the site i'm talking about is smashbrosmelee.com, which is still down as we speak.

I have never had any problems with the host before.

What excuse is your host giving for the downtime?

The machine appears to be at rackshack. Given how low their prices are, why could not the host have alternate services up by now?

I disagree with the other comment -- 36 hours is three whole days. You can configure a new server in less time manually. Far less time for those control panel folks.

So if the machine is a rackshack machine then you can eliminate some possibilities

- the network, since clearly rackshack themselves are not down for 36 hours
- spares, since you can get these more or less instantly there if not mistaken

Leaving open two real possibilities
- hosting company insolvency they went broke, aren't paying bills or some such thing
- data gone bad, they were hosting everything on a single drive or some such lunacy and have no way to recover

What has your hosting company communicated to you about the downtime? Are you buying directly from Rackshack or a reseller of some sort?

Why not call the technical contact associated with your domain:
Technical Contact:
Domain, Registration support@000Domains.com
PO Box 17352
Little Rock, AR 72222-7352
US
501-708-0009
Fax: 501-954-7379

Or email them. 000Domains.com is running.

It is a reseller, and so far I haven't gotten a hold of them... I guess I will give them one more day to see if they can get it back up.

I'm pretty sure its not rackshack, thogh I'm not positive. I'm no hosting genius, myself.

Its a PLESK control panel if that helps...

Fairly certain its at Rackshack:

Domain Name: SMASHBROSMELEE.COM
Registrar of Record: TUCOWS, INC.
Record last updated on 08-Apr-2002.
Record expires on 16-May-2003.
Record Created on 16-May-2001.

Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.RACKSHACK.NET 207.218.223.132
NS2.RACKSHACK.NET 207.218.223.162


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

heh, ya i guess that means it is.

How would contacting the Domain People at 000domains help?

Clearly its at Rackshack. Your IP address is one of theirs:

rollei# whois -a 64.246.0.8
Everyones Internet, Inc. (NETBLK-EVRY-BLK-9)
2600 Southwest Frwy., Suite 500
Houston, TX 77098
US

Netname: EVRY-BLK-9
Netblock: 64.246.0.0 - 64.246.47.255
Maintainer: EVRY

Coordinator:
Williams, Randy (RW172-ARIN) admin@ev1.net
(713) 400-5400 x255

Domain System inverse mapping provided by:

NS1.EV1.NET 216.88.76.6
NS2.EV1.NET 216.88.77.7

ADDRESSES WITHIN THIS BLOCK ARE NON-PORTABLE

Record last updated on 15-Apr-2002.
Database last updated on 12-Jun-2002 20:00:26 EDT.

So you think either the Data is bad, and they are frantically trying to get it back up, or they went bankrupt? =/

Originally posted by Moreliator
heh, ya i guess that means it is.

How would contacting the Domain People at 000domains help?

Its possible there is a relationship between them and the reseller. I think you should just post the resellers name and then we may be able to find you more contact information. It is inexcusable to be down that long and not contact clients.

Think about it - if they can access the internet to work on their box, they can send out email.

And if they have no client records other than what is on the box, then they are not reliable business people, are they?

If for some reason you are unwilling to post the resellers name, PM me and I'll send you the info back in a PM.

Originally posted by Moreliator
So you think either the Data is bad, and they are frantically trying to get it back up, or they went bankrupt? =/ Either possibility seems increasingly likely with each passing hour.

Originally posted by Moreliator
Hello,
If a host gaurantees you uptime of 99% or better, what do you if it doesnt come true?

For example, my site has been down for over 36 hours now, and during this time I am losing visitors AND money from sponsors.

Should the host refund some of my money, the whole month, or whats the solution?


According to domainwhitepages.com, the site you listed (smashbrosmelee.com) is using rackshack nameservers, IP's belonging to their parent company EV1.net, and the traceroute is timing out as host unreachable.

If your host is a third party who is using a dedicated rackshack machine, or a reseller or that third party, you may be SOL if you are unable to contact them.

Check their terms of service on their website-it's down now, but you can use the Way Back Machine at www.archive.org to look at an archived copy of it from before the outage, and see how they word their guarantee. Or if there are any terms anywhere. Most hosts do not, or cannot, guarantee the quality of their service.

One Tier1 hosting provider states '99.9% uptime guaranteed' on their sales pages, and then buries deep in their support documentation the information that it's not possible for them to guarantee uptime, so no refunds will be given if they fail to meet 99.9% uptime.

If your host has an SLA (Service Level Agreement) which is different from a guarantee, then you'd have all of the service requirements and the refund schedule spelled out, and they'd have to give you money back whenever your service failed to meet the requirements.

Time to find a new host, but this time, check them out thoroughly before signing up, or have someone else check them out for you.

Originally posted by OKIHost
As far as looking for a new host I don't see any reason to look for a new host unless this is becoming a monthly thing.. Some people don't realize that NO ONE is perfect and that every company is going to have downtime sooner or later for whatever reason it may be.

Since your site seems to be hosted at Rackshack, what is your experience with downtime? Would you leave clients in the lurch for 36 hours without notifying them as to what is happening?

What is your experience with having faulty components or machines at Rackshack dealt with by that company?

Honestly curious - I have to assume you wouldn't treat your clients the way this reseller seems to be. I'm also assuming that Rackshack themselves are able to deal with downtime caused by their machines in a much more responsive way than what is happening here.

I certainly do not advocate switching hosts simply because of downtime - but I do recommend switching hosts when its clear that the hosting company does not have the resources to deal with problems -- or when a host demonstrates that they do not react to problems in an appropriate manner.

This host meets all those criteria.

Well there still has been no reply. When this evening hits it will be 2 days that my site has been down.

I can't get ahold of them, is there ANYTHING I can do =/ ?

Oh, and I just got my monthly fee charged a day before the site went down....

Originally posted by Moreliator
Well there still has been no reply. When this evening hits it will be 2 days that my site has been down.

I can't get ahold of them, is there ANYTHING I can do =/ ?

Oh, and I just got my monthly fee charged a day before the site went down....
If you've been down for 48hrs and haven't heard from them, there's a good chance they've gone out of business. Just get a new host.

hmm, well the site is back up now...which is a huge relief for me.

But still no news from the host, this is really weird.

Anyway, thanks for your help everyone.

This isn't inoverse.com by any chance ?

actually, it is... did you have the same problem?

Certainly did. I have an affiliate site for my partner with them - all very low budget at the start, but now generating a reasonable amount of money (well, she's happy anyway !).

The first couple of emails I sent them bounced and I think they have been part of the Ddos attack on Rackshack. However, it is unacceptable that they should not get in contact and let us know what is going on.

I have had problems with Inoverse before and the standard of support is way below what it should be.

I have their phone number (I presume it's real) though, if you want to PM me and some suggestions for alternative hosts. I will be calling them tomorrow and will be sure to mention your problems as well as my own.

Stay well clear of Inoverse.com - that's my advice. It's only cost us $80-$100 bucks so far in lost revenue, but I am not happy and will be making this clear to them tomorrow.