so, I'm with DOT5... so far, they've been pretty good. But I've noticed the odd occations over the last 2 weeks where my site was not available.

Today, this morning and this afternoon (now in fact).... the site has been unavailable for an hour or two at a time.

The tech guys say something about a script running on the sever screwing things up, and they are trying to fix it.

That's all very well, and they are polite etc. But at the end of the day, I pay for a service, and want it to be up 99% of the time.

Is this normal for these 'cheap and happy' hosts..... downtime here there and everywhere.... but giving you a sorry and a smile?

I'm starting to think I should go back to the expensive hosts... never had these problems



:bawling:

edk, consider this:

Do they respond to you like your brother would? Do they seem real? I don't mean your current vendor, but specifically these :Crappy Hosts:, if they don't.... find another vendor.

The very last thing I will tolerate is disingenuine attitudes, you should too.

All too often I've found that these same vendors, and I mean ANY kind of vendor is up to no good somewhere... something is amiss, something isn't quite right, those are flags to tell you to wya

If they aren't falling over themselves to make you happy, then they don't deserve your business.

> how much downtime can i put up with?!?!

you should know what your limit is. if you do not feel you're getting value for your money try a refund.. if you still do not feel satisified, or the downtime is causing you stress or money.. well change hosts ?

your limit is just that.. yours :)

Yeah, like I tell my kids "a smile and a sorry" are nice, but they only go so far. Do it right, then you'll have better things to smile about.

:)

OK, let me ask another way.

For these $100 a year hosts, should I be able to demand/expect 99.9% uptime.

Or, must I expect they for $100 a year, I'll only be getting what I'm lucky to get! :blush:

Really depends on the host.

A host that makes that their entire business model, I would say don't expect much.

But then a vendor may offer discounts, or specials, it's entirely different.

right.... I guess I will try to keep calm, relax... and see what happens over the course of some time.

The package I have is great value for money, and the speed is very good - when it's up.

I'm coming to realise something I never took much thought over before. All the other factors such as price, specs, speed, support etc etc, don't mean **** if your site isn't up!!
:eek:

Exactly, which is why I'm insane when I'm on shift =)

I turn into a sysadmin monster, because that is what our customers are paying for, their site to be up.

I had a bad recompile and a core dump this morning, noone wanted to be around me until I recompiled ahhaha, your vendor ought to be serious, as evidenced here.... customers are serious.

Off topic :Samuel, you forgot to add the :2082 port to your live control panel demo link :)

http://www.mbshost.com/?page=cpdemo

Originally posted by sidez
Off topic :Samuel, you forgot to add the :2082 port to your live control panel demo link :)

http://www.mbshost.com/?page=cpdemo

Most likely that was intentional. That's a static demo to give you a feeling for what the control panel looks like. Live demos provide lousy security.

The demo is running live on the server, but not linked from the main site.

You're going to get me in trouble here =)

Originally posted by edk
:)

OK, let me ask another way.

For these $100 a year hosts, should I be able to demand/expect 99.9% uptime.

Or, must I expect they for $100 a year, I'll only be getting what I'm lucky to get! :blush:

You can get great hosting for $100 a year, but if you want 50gb's of transfer per month, don't expect good uptime.

good, fast, cheap .. pick two.

.. good support.. good uptime.. cheap support.. cheap uptime.. you get the idea.

I have always found that you get what you pay for.
Buy a cheap ticket and you get a bag of nuts and no leg room.
Buy a cheap car, you get cloth seats and lots of brake downs.
I have found that the same applies to hosting, pay cheap and you get cheap.
Just my 2 cents after learning the hard way............................

$100/year is not that cheap. It's $8.33/month. I would expect at least 99% uptime... especially if that's what they promise. Now, the $1/month guys - that's a bit different.

But, you have to understand a little about shared hosting... there are quite a few websites on each server and eventually they go down. Downtimes should be kept to a minimum and any customers that violate TOS's with scripts and programs should be removed immediately...

But regardless of how careful you are, downtime happens. If it's more than 1% a month you should definately be worried... but the occasional glitch is just part of shared hosting.

Originally posted by CDHost
Snip

Valid points but the number of times I have seen people requesting 50gb's of bandwidth for $10/mth is just :eek:

Uptime is fundamental. Unless we're talking about a $15/yr host, if you're not consistently getting 99%+ something is wrong with your host and you need to find another.

Any host can have a temporary, exceptional problem, but if they can't fix it quickly there's a high probability they lack the ability or desire to do so, and it's quite likely things will never be as they should.

Allowing a host to strikeout once is one thing. Allowing them a second is another. This ain't baseball.

site is still down.

a few hours ago, they were blaming a script.... how long can this take ... jezzus.

oh, and no repsonse to the ticket i sent.

:angry:

must stay calm.... must stay calm..... ;)

*hands a case of asprin to edk

:D

Originally posted by Samuel
*hands a case of asprin to edk

:D
Sounds like a 6 pack will be more practical here Samuel. :D

haha.... thanks..... bottle of vodka would be more handy!

Aussie Bob.. posted at the same time :stickout: you know it!

Well, if they're offering 50 GB of BW for $10/month then they obviously have a flawed business plan... steer clear.

Originally posted by Aussie Bob

Sounds like a 6 pack will be more practical here Samuel. :D

Maybe a slab :D

Originally posted by CDHost
Well, if they're offering 50 GB of BW for $10/month then they obviously have a flawed business plan... steer clear.

no, it's

500mb/20GB/ month
$99.99 year

can't believe it... after being up for an hour.... it's been back down for the last couple....

...am i gonna have to start spamming dot5 hate mail???!!! :angry:

Originally posted by edk
...am i gonna have to start spamming dot5 hate mail???!!! :angry:

no, is the simple answer to that question.

Originally posted by edk

...am i gonna have to start spamming dot5 hate mail???!!! :angry:

I would suggest you set a mental deadline, say tomorrow sometime and if your site isn't up on a consistent basis after that, start looking elsewhere.

Their site says "Our experienced technical support staff ensure customers receive hassle free web hosting, all of the time." That's a claim they are professional, not novices regarding on the job training.

What are you talking about? $100/year - good company, $35/year - crap? Really?

For example, our prices starts from $2.95/m and we had 2 downtimes this year - 1 hour in January due to network problem on all servers and 3 hours in May on one server. Then - not more than 5 minutes/server/month (apache, mysql restarts, kernel update etc)

*IF* we had 4 hours of downtime this year for all servers, our uptime - 99.988%, if 5hours - 99.94%

So, it depends.

Originally posted by edk
:)

OK, let me ask another way.

For these $100 a year hosts, should I be able to demand/expect 99.9% uptime.

Or, must I expect they for $100 a year, I'll only be getting what I'm lucky to get! :blush:

first define the uptime then ask yourself that. based on 99.9

if yearly, then you are looking at 8 hours of straight downtime before you can complain.

monthly = about 45 minutes
weekly = about 9 minutes
daily = about 1 minute 30 seconds

now how does a $100 yearly sound against your request.

well for yearly guy it seems reasonable.
but monthly or more refined, nope you are asking way to much for so little cash.

then also look at the SLA.
does the uptime cover hardware failure or just the network. if it's the network, then it's a joke, becasue the truth of the mater is that the network ends at the in plug on the datacenter router. that uptime is no longer valid beond that point ( rare cases it might be but those are specific contracts ).

then you have dns issues, router failures, hardware failures ...
Example : I can restore a hard drive for my windows boxes in about 1hour 12 minutes ( start to finish ). My SLA covers me for about 2 hours, giving me only 40 minutes or so of breathing room. you need to take the restore times into account.

I hear people saying that they can restore from tape 40 gigs of data in less than 1 hour, well that sort of equipemnt cost a fortune ( about 16k if I recall my prices right ). I know I can not do 20 gigs is less that 1 hour so I have to design a system's based on 20 gig of restoration per drive.

take a solid look at your host then ask yourself, can I live with 8 hours down, if so then don't worry about it, but if you can not, then start shopping around.

Mike