Mkay.

Since I'm now scrambling to find my domains a new home, I've had the opportunity to peruse a number of hosting provider websites, and I was struck by one particular common aspect:

Supposed "uptime guarantees"

"99.5% uptime guaranteed."

"99.8% uptime guaranteed."

"99.99% uptime guaranteed."

"127% uptime guaranteed." (just kidding :D)

But then when you delve deeper, it turns into:

Guaranteed or WHAT???

Most sites never bother providing the "or else" part of this supposed guarantee.

"99.5% uptime guaranteed or... we'll giggle hysterically."

"99.5% uptime guaranteed or... we'll say we're sorry nicely."

"99.5% uptime guaranteed or... we'll give you a share of Enron stock."

"99.5% uptime guaranteed or... we'll arrange a date for you with Roseanne Barr."

Basically these "guarantees" are no guarantees whatsoever. It's marketing spiel. Let's say that a host doesn't meet their uptime guarantee. What are you going to do about it? They've got you by the short hairs. Yes, you can decide to go elsewhere (for another crap shoot) and deal with site movement, DNS switchovers again, etc. That still doesn't do anything about the time your site has already been down. I'm willing to bet that most people simply bite the bullet and grumble over their morning Cheerios.

People look at the XX.X% number and think it means something. It doesn't. Here's a good analogy: How many times have you seen an ad on TV or heard one on the radio saying "Make up to $10,000 a month or more!"

Pop quiz: From a legal/analytical standpoint, what's the difference between the following 2 statements:

"Make up to $10,000 a month or more!"

"Make up to $1.87 a month or more!"

Answer: not a damned thing. They mean the same thing. Both statements are open ended at both ends. The "up to" takes care of $0 to the number in question, and the "or more" takes care of anything higher. Marketing droids pick a number that sheep, err, umm, consumers will "home in on", a number that will WOW people, when in fact the number is meaningless.

Same thing with uptime guarantees.

P.T. Barnum would LOVE the hosting industry.

Here endeth the rant. :)

-Dan

P.S. Is my cynicism showing yet? :) :)

And to make the things worse:
Past performance does not guarantee future results.

Originally posted by dharding
. . . . . . Is my cynicism showing yet? :) :) Yes.



Marketing is marketing.

what would you like to see in an uptime guarantee? i am going to add one with our new hosting platform when its done, my thought was something like this
99.x guarantee if x isnt met in a given month that month is free counters reset each month
is that what your thinking is a real guarantee?


Steve

Whoops . . . . :(

Someone's gotta move them "Edit/Delete" and "Quote" buttons farther apart.

Originally posted by Keeg
what would you like to see in an uptime guarantee? i am going to add one with our new hosting platform when its done, my thought was something like this
99.x guarantee if x isnt met in a given month that month is free counters reset each month
is that what your thinking is a real guarantee?

Steve

You're on a safe bet Steve...considering the uptime we get from you guys. :)

But no, I don't think a free month is appropriate. At least, not one set in stone. Problems happen...just fix them quick. Perhaps a "up to a maximum of x%".

Your operating costs don't disappear with the downtime.

Cheers

Gary

Actually Gary i was refering to Shared hosting but your right operating costs don't disappear with the downtime the plan is to build a hosting platform where the guarantee wont be used as the uptime will be greater. dedicated servers would have to be based on what i get from my upstream providers and could only be network based as server issues could be user created.

Steve

I as well have never had issue with your Uptime either Steve and Im sure your Virtual Accounts are just as dependable!

Now I have had some issues with my rackshack account and several network problems over the last month, has seemed to be very frequent.

This would make it very hard for me to give a 99.9 guarantee when Im not guaranteed the same.

My service can only be as good as my network provider.

Originally posted by Keeg
what would you like to see in an uptime guarantee? i am going to add one with our new hosting platform when its done, my thought was something like this
99.x guarantee if x isnt met in a given month that month is free counters reset each month
is that what your thinking is a real guarantee?


Steve

An entire month free? That's a bit too generous IMHO. I could see some sort of sliding scale depending on the real hours of outage, perhaps culminating in a free month at some point.

Personally, I would much rather see a month's/quarter's worth of real uptime stats than some sort of "guarantee". I would give much more weight to a company's track record and performance than some static statement that claims XX.X% uptime.

Live uptime stats are even better.

Show me what you *are* doing, not what you claim to do. Let the raw numbers speak for themselves. Provide honest explanations for any anomalies on an ongoing basis.

But yes, if you are going to promote an "99.X% uptime guarantee" it should have some teeth to it and be spelled out upfront rather then left to interpretation/negotiation at some later point after the fact.

Just my $0.01,

-Dan

Originally posted by dharding


Personally, I would much rather see a month's/quarter's worth of real uptime stats than some sort of "guarantee". I would give much more weight to a company's track record and performance than some static statement that claims XX.X% uptime.

Dan

Yep. The proof's in the pudding. I've yet to see it, but uptime stats should come directly from some third party, an independent monitoring service.

It may seem better if a host gives the specifics of downtime refunds, but is it? You don't know unless you can verify it from an independent party.

It would be considered foolhardy if a banker loaned money to an applicant based upon self-reported information, without independent verification. It's equally stupid to make hosting decisions based solely upon what you find on a host's website.

the only problem i see with that is how do you get stats from an independant location unless they are offering 100% UPTIME? obviously any outages they would have network or server side would also reflect on the uptime reports for a host located elsewhere. you would pretty much have to have your stat reporting located at your facility and yes realtime stats with a track record would be the way to do it.

Steve

I don't have a statement like that ... go figure, even though most people do. I'd agree with a few people here though.

"My service can only be as good as my network provider." -- Very true ...

"Live uptime stats are even better.

Show me what you *are* doing, not what you claim to do. Let the raw numbers speak for themselves. Provide honest explanations for any anomalies on an ongoing basis. " --- Good again

When I introduce the uptime guarentee (though I'm not sure if it will be 99.9% probably 98.9% or so ....) I wouldn't put it up without having an uptime monitor somewhere (there's many places that provide it) so real time stats could prove it.

To me, an uptime guarentee is worthless from, ironically, 99.9% of the people who offer them. They offer no stats or anything (most)

I'd also agree with there's not much you can do. Most places that have them (when you question them) make you provide timestampped traceroutes etc and so they can get out of it or whatever ...

There's a lot of places I've found that provide guarentees, whether uptime or refund and don't stick to them; that's how things go I guess .......

In my opinion uptime guarantees are just an advertising gimmick. No one can guarantee uptime on an unstable platform such as the internet. Yes, we can try and keep servers up, try and keep networks up, but at some point that control is out of the hands of the host.

Pleae let me give you a refund because:

1) Your CGI script ate all the file descriptors and hosed Apache.
2) Your badly coded MySQL database left too many open connections and Apache finally gave up.
3) The software running your site was completely vulnerable and the server got compromised causing downtime to correct certain things.
4) Yet another script raised the load to 150 and effectively shut off Apache.

Or....

5) The DC's routers failed
6) Qwest had problems
7) InternerSeer reported your site down for 5 hours (love that one ;))

Yes, just love those uptime guarantees. :D

There are those very few to give the actual 99.9%, but of course, you're right about the crap you get with the other sites where .1% actually mean 10% :P