Website hosting downtime.

[Lisa0825]

I took over the job of updating the website for the animal shelter I volunteer at. I have only been visiting/working on the website since around August. In that time, there have been at least 4 periods of downtime, from a couple hours to most of a day. The official "webmaster" for our org says Dreamhost is the most dependable host she has used and they have great customer service, so I guess we are stuck with them.

The last time I had a website, I had Simplehost for 2 years, and only noticed any major downtime once. Am I being unreasonable? Is this much downtime supposed to be normal? I won't convince her, but I would just like to know the answer!

[DS1]

1. I've seen medietemple.net down once in the last 4 years

[Lisa0825]

2. Thanks.

I've been looking online, and all the reviews I find for Dreamhost are positively glowing! I don't get it though. Why does no one mind the service interruptions? It seems like I'm a more demanding customer, I suppose? :shrug:

[Ravenseye]

3. That's unreasonable

I own a web design, development, and maintenance company and that sort of downtime is absolutely unacceptable. We colocate our servers with Rackspace and we've had almost no downtime. Things happen. Servers crash. A couple hours though is unacceptable, and unnecessary.

Once we had an entire server become corrupted and we were able to get all the sites back up and online within about an hour and a half. That was basically starting from scratch and just getting everything set up again.

Rackspace backs up our drives, and they have multiple connections to the internet through multiple vendors.

There are other options out there, and I've tried many of them. Depending on the price I would look around. A full days downtime would automatically trigger my leaving that hosting service. Period. There's no other way to describe it.

If you're on Dreamhost's 8 bucks a month plan it'll be hard to beat, and you're going to have to weigh your budget with your experiences. Honestly i've never been 100% satisified with any of the cut rate hosting companies, but some organizations especially non-profits just don't have the budget to move up to something with guaranteeed 99.9% uptime.

[Lisa0825]

4. I wish the decision were mine.

The "webmaster" who designed it was always too busy to do updates in a timely manner, so I volunteered to do the updates. But since the site is "her baby," I am limited as to what I am allowed to do. I just have the best interest of the shelter in my mind, but whatever. I had Simplehost for 2 years at only around $10 per month, so cheap can still be reliable... just ot Dreamhost!

Thanks for your input. I am going to save these messages, so at some point I amy be able to convince them.

BTW, I found this website: http://www.dreamhost-sucks.com/ LOL

[Ravenseye]

7. Busy Webmasters

One of my pet peeves. People who think of the site as their little project and won't let anyone else have control of it, and yet can't find time to do the necessary updates. Especially for a small non-profit there are a number of things you need to do...

If you want to PM me for some tips or tricks from my experience feel free. Just some basic things you can do to really help your site out for free.

[China_cat]

5. That's not good

I've got 2 domains with Interland, one with InterXstream, and one that I can't even remember the company's name and I haven't had that kind of downtime with any of them and I've been with Interland 6 years now.

[Ravenseye]

6. Interland is better than it used to be

They had an expansion I think around 97-98 or so. Maybe 99. Things were shit back then with them. Constant downtimes, bad customer service. Once they had their new operations in place though it evened out. I've had a couple of my clients on Interland servers (they chose to keep them there) and haven't had problems recently.

[Lisa0825]

8. Thanks! I'll keep them in mind too!

I figure within the year, I will probably take over the site completely, but I may have to wean her off it first!LOL

[Lisa0825]

9. Good news! It's down again!LOL

and this time whatever they changed seems to have screwed with our online form too! So, I think the webmaster may be ready to consider alternatives. I emailed her links to each of the services y'all recommended. Thanks!:-0

[Orangepeel]

10. I use tigertech.net

It was recommended to me by a DU poster (JCMach) years ago. The price is good, the service is great and I've never noticed any major downtime over 4 years and several sites. I do small political sites that don't usually get a lot of traffic, but I don't even remember downtime right before election day.

[Lisa0825]

11. Thanks!

I forwarded that one along too:-)