Bad hosting day blog

August 1, 2006 By

How do you treat your customers when you let them down? DreamHost did about as good a job as I can imagine after they were down during a power outage that they couldn’t control. Read the comments where customers are coming back — corporate blogging done right. Thanks to Dylan Bennett for emailing me this.

Filed Under: 1
  • http://whatsnextblog.com whatsnext

    The reason Dream Host isn’t my host anymore is exactly because they’ve had outages like this before and promised to fix them before.

    I gave them a whole bunch of chances, and they were Mickey Mouse all the way to the day I switched hosts to one that provides tech support 24/7 and great service for *less* money than I paid Dream Host.

    Dream Host may do blogging right, but when it comes to hosting, they just don’t have their act together.

    They don’t need a good explanation, they need a good contingency plan.

  • http://www.whatsnextblog.com B.L. Ochman

    The reason Dream Host isn’t my host anymore is exactly because they’ve had outages like this before and promised to fix them before.

    I gave them a whole bunch of chances, and they were Mickey Mouse all the way to the day I switched hosts to one that provides tech support 24/7 and great service for *less* money than I paid Dream Host.

    Dream Host may do blogging right, but when it comes to hosting, they just don’t have their act together.

    They don’t need a good explanation, they need a good contingency plan.

  • http://www.microsoft-tech.com/ Jason Cox

    I wish my past hosts had been that honest, I give these guys alot of credit for coming forward and explaining what was really going on instead of just sending out a canned email saying ‘Were working on the issue’.

  • http://www.microsoft-tech.com Jason Cox

    I wish my past hosts had been that honest, I give these guys alot of credit for coming forward and explaining what was really going on instead of just sending out a canned email saying ‘Were working on the issue’.

  • Jon

    Like Ochman, I’ve had problems with Dreamhost as well.

    When everythings working, Dreamhost is great. They provide a nice control panel, good pricing, nice features. But unfortunately, they have a bit too much downtime.

    I was with them for a year and had numerous instances of “we’re taking the server you’re on down for maintenance”, “we’re replacing the harddrive in your server”, “we’re doing [insert whatever] on your server” and so on. And those are just the announced downtimes. There were many more periods when the site I hosted with them would be inaccessible (from multiple locations — it wasn’t a home connectivity problem).

  • Jon

    Like Ochman, I’ve had problems with Dreamhost as well.

    When everythings working, Dreamhost is great. They provide a nice control panel, good pricing, nice features. But unfortunately, they have a bit too much downtime.

    I was with them for a year and had numerous instances of “we’re taking the server you’re on down for maintenance”, “we’re replacing the harddrive in your server”, “we’re doing [insert whatever] on your server” and so on. And those are just the announced downtimes. There were many more periods when the site I hosted with them would be inaccessible (from multiple locations — it wasn’t a home connectivity problem).

  • http://www.mcdevzone.com/ Mike

    I’ve had fewer problems with DreamHost than I’ve had with other web hosts I’ve used. The people at DH know what they’re doing and they’re honest about what’s going on. One hosting company I used went down for a few days and when they came back up all the MySQL databases were gone. Thankfully I keep local backups.

  • http://www.mcdevzone.com/ Mike

    I’ve had fewer problems with DreamHost than I’ve had with other web hosts I’ve used. The people at DH know what they’re doing and they’re honest about what’s going on. One hosting company I used went down for a few days and when they came back up all the MySQL databases were gone. Thankfully I keep local backups.

  • Pingback: g-WH!Z

  • http://www.dotfive.com/ Brady J. Frey

    I agree with most of these comments — I love their open discussions, and enjoyed their system when it worked. I switched to them by recommendation in January this year, and suffered through monthly drops (atleast half a business day a month we lost all sites and email), my mysql databases being ‘accidentally’ moved for two days and downing all my sites, my sites being down during business presentations… I loved the cutting edge, but not at the expense of odd ball drop offs, delayed support responses, and all around insecurity. This was the nail in the coffin, we swung all of our systems over during this mess; and I have no desire to go back, regardless of their honesty.

  • http://www.dotfive.com Brady J. Frey

    I agree with most of these comments — I love their open discussions, and enjoyed their system when it worked. I switched to them by recommendation in January this year, and suffered through monthly drops (atleast half a business day a month we lost all sites and email), my mysql databases being ‘accidentally’ moved for two days and downing all my sites, my sites being down during business presentations… I loved the cutting edge, but not at the expense of odd ball drop offs, delayed support responses, and all around insecurity. This was the nail in the coffin, we swung all of our systems over during this mess; and I have no desire to go back, regardless of their honesty.

  • http://www.thezeroboss.com/ The Zero Boss

    I’m willing to forgive them the downtime, hard as it’s been on my blog. They have EXCELLENT customer service, and great services for the little they charge. In particular, they were kind enough to forgive me $260 in disk overages when, like an idiot, I let a cron job that backed up my mySql databases run amock.

  • http://www.thezeroboss.com The Zero Boss

    I’m willing to forgive them the downtime, hard as it’s been on my blog. They have EXCELLENT customer service, and great services for the little they charge. In particular, they were kind enough to forgive me $260 in disk overages when, like an idiot, I let a cron job that backed up my mySql databases run amock.

  • Chris

    I’m sticking with them because, unlike my last hosts, they’re honest. I can deal with a bit of downtime if it means they don’t delete my entire site and reset everything back to defaults. Yes, my previous company did that and then tried to blame me. Good bye to them.

  • Chris

    I’m sticking with them because, unlike my last hosts, they’re honest. I can deal with a bit of downtime if it means they don’t delete my entire site and reset everything back to defaults. Yes, my previous company did that and then tried to blame me. Good bye to them.

  • http://www.brilliantdays.com/ Oyvind

    I have been with Dreamhost for a year or so, and my site has been offline for almost a day once, and a few hours three times. I have a script that automatically checks the status every 15 minutes, and it has reported my site offline 14 times this year. 10 of them reported it back up again the next time it checked so it could be just traffic. The last two were about an hour and two hours, the last one my bad as I had messed with the htaccess files too much.

    So: A day and a half in total? Probably less. And most of this was the outages they report in the blog.

    1.5 days of 365, that’s about 99.6 uptime. It seems like Del.icio.us and Flickr has been more offline than that during the same period…

  • http://www.brilliantdays.com Oyvind

    I have been with Dreamhost for a year or so, and my site has been offline for almost a day once, and a few hours three times. I have a script that automatically checks the status every 15 minutes, and it has reported my site offline 14 times this year. 10 of them reported it back up again the next time it checked so it could be just traffic. The last two were about an hour and two hours, the last one my bad as I had messed with the htaccess files too much.

    So: A day and a half in total? Probably less. And most of this was the outages they report in the blog.

    1.5 days of 365, that’s about 99.6 uptime. It seems like Del.icio.us and Flickr has been more offline than that during the same period…

  • http://www.brick-labs.com/ Eric D. Burdo

    The last month has been a royal pain for hosting with DreamHost. I only get to work on sites at certain times, and when those sites are down, it means I can’t work.

    I’ll finish out my year with DH, and see how they do. They do have excellent pricing, and I like the honesty… but if things don’t improve by the end of the year, I may have to move.

  • http://www.brick-labs.com/ Eric D. Burdo

    The last month has been a royal pain for hosting with DreamHost. I only get to work on sites at certain times, and when those sites are down, it means I can’t work.

    I’ll finish out my year with DH, and see how they do. They do have excellent pricing, and I like the honesty… but if things don’t improve by the end of the year, I may have to move.

  • http://littlecosmo.typepad.com/ Little Cosmo

    Why they are not using power generators. Or at leasta kind of a batteries…

    Cosmo

  • http://littlecosmo.typepad.com Little Cosmo

    Why they are not using power generators. Or at leasta kind of a batteries…

    Cosmo

  • http://www.liftport.com/progress/wp Brian

    Liftport has been a Dreamhost customer for a little over three years now. Uptime has been superb, customer service is great and I love the transparency.

    Qualifier – uptime has been superb for the price. We don’t pay that much, and we get more from them than we could elsewhere for the captial we outlay. I don’t have stats ready to hand but the downtime we’ve had isn’t as much as reported above. YMMV.

    We’ll be leaving soon but not because we’re miffed – we’re simply outgrowing DreamHost and we can get a colo server cheaper than they can provide.

    Why they are not using power generators. Or at leasta kind of a batteries…

    Cosmo the answer to your question is in the linked article.

  • http://www.liftport.com/progress/wp Brian

    Liftport has been a Dreamhost customer for a little over three years now. Uptime has been superb, customer service is great and I love the transparency.

    Qualifier – uptime has been superb for the price. We don’t pay that much, and we get more from them than we could elsewhere for the captial we outlay. I don’t have stats ready to hand but the downtime we’ve had isn’t as much as reported above. YMMV.

    We’ll be leaving soon but not because we’re miffed – we’re simply outgrowing DreamHost and we can get a colo server cheaper than they can provide.

    Why they are not using power generators. Or at leasta kind of a batteries…

    Cosmo the answer to your question is in the linked article.

  • http://uberbin.net/ mariano

    Robert, im a longtime user of Dreamhost; i recommended it everytime someone asked for my advice… and this kind of “communications” are the rule within the site.

    However, i dont think that this honesty is enough fi you run a web based business. What you need is reliability and thats something that DH was lacking.

    Yes i know..if you want to run a business site in a 7,95usd/month hosting you are a cheap-stupid-bastard but… come on, a full month of problems?

    That full month of problems were nothing but excuses, i also host in Mediatemple and they are located in the same facilities… Why did MT went down just 12 seconds in the last 3 weeks?

    And im not talking about few minutes down.. im talking about almost 3 days down in a row; and 2 or 3 hours every single day for almost a week.

    Yes, i love their honesty, the pricing and the features… but sometimes i love reliability and uptime.

    (BTW, im still hosting some blogs in DH)

  • http://uberbin.net mariano

    Robert, im a longtime user of Dreamhost; i recommended it everytime someone asked for my advice… and this kind of “communications” are the rule within the site.

    However, i dont think that this honesty is enough fi you run a web based business. What you need is reliability and thats something that DH was lacking.

    Yes i know..if you want to run a business site in a 7,95usd/month hosting you are a cheap-stupid-bastard but… come on, a full month of problems?

    That full month of problems were nothing but excuses, i also host in Mediatemple and they are located in the same facilities… Why did MT went down just 12 seconds in the last 3 weeks?

    And im not talking about few minutes down.. im talking about almost 3 days down in a row; and 2 or 3 hours every single day for almost a week.

    Yes, i love their honesty, the pricing and the features… but sometimes i love reliability and uptime.

    (BTW, im still hosting some blogs in DH)

  • http://www.puranijeansaurguitar.blogspot.com/ Balaji M

    One of my blogging friends pointed out to me that none only one the CEO’s in the fortune 500 list actually maintain a blog. Isn’t that weird?

    http://chennailiving.blogspot.com/2006/08/why-ceos-dont-blog.html#links

  • http://www.puranijeansaurguitar.blogspot.com Balaji M

    One of my blogging friends pointed out to me that none only one the CEO’s in the fortune 500 list actually maintain a blog. Isn’t that weird?

    http://chennailiving.blogspot.com/2006/08/why-ceos-dont-blog.html#links

  • http://www.liftport.com/progress/wp Brian

    That full month of problems were nothing but excuses, i also host in Mediatemple and they are located in the same facilities… Why did MT went down just 12 seconds in the last 3 weeks?

    They explained that – it was a power problems PLUS a raft of internal issues on their network that brought them low.

    Yes, i love their honesty, the pricing and the features… but sometimes i love reliability and uptime.

    Agreed but . . . you get what you pay for.

  • http://www.liftport.com/progress/wp Brian

    That full month of problems were nothing but excuses, i also host in Mediatemple and they are located in the same facilities… Why did MT went down just 12 seconds in the last 3 weeks?

    They explained that – it was a power problems PLUS a raft of internal issues on their network that brought them low.

    Yes, i love their honesty, the pricing and the features… but sometimes i love reliability and uptime.

    Agreed but . . . you get what you pay for.

  • http://www.slashchick.com/ SlashChick

    I guess web hosting isn’t so “easy” sometimes!

    http://blog.dreamhost.com/2005/08/08/why-web-hosting-is-easy/

    I remember when they posted that blog entry (quote from it: “Fortunately we were apparently super-glued to the biggest cash heifer this side of Ebay…Our data center and network expenses, i.e. our ‘Cost of Revenue’, is about 5% of our total revenues.. and it drops every year.”)

    Hmm…

  • http://www.slashchick.com/ SlashChick

    I guess web hosting isn’t so “easy” sometimes!

    http://blog.dreamhost.com/2005/08/08/why-web-hosting-is-easy/

    I remember when they posted that blog entry (quote from it: “Fortunately we were apparently super-glued to the biggest cash heifer this side of Ebay…Our data center and network expenses, i.e. our ‘Cost of Revenue’, is about 5% of our total revenues.. and it drops every year.”)

    Hmm…

  • http://uberbin.net/ mariano

    brian… i know that… thats why i host some blogs and nothing else… and read my comment cause its says something similar ;)

  • http://uberbin.net mariano

    brian… i know that… thats why i host some blogs and nothing else… and read my comment cause its says something similar ;)

  • Pingback: Denken Über » Dreamhost y los malos días

  • Pingback: Californication » Blog Archive » Dreamghost

  • Pingback: » Honesty, transparency can offset customer service disasters | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

  • Pingback: God of Love Music Poetry » Blog Archive » Blogs - SOS Tool for one & all

  • http://www.ladishes.com/ Mike

    Had lots of problems with SiteGround. Bad enough to spend money to register http://www.sitegroundsucks.com and post the details there. You may want to look at it and use it as a reference.

    Mike

  • http://www.ladishes.com Mike

    Had lots of problems with SiteGround. Bad enough to spend money to register http://www.sitegroundsucks.com and post the details there. You may want to look at it and use it as a reference.

    Mike

  • Pingback: Julio Garcia - Web Technology, Movies, Sports, Life in San Jose, and more - » Blog Archive » Looking to Move from DreamHost

  • http://www.exclventures.com/ John

    We need to appreciate that Servers do go down. The capability to shorten the period and actually turnaround the sytsem within a reasonable period would set apart the winning hosts. I am happy to report that that though they carry huge lot of websites, Host Departments has been doing well. I never had any issues. The databases work fast and there is 24 hour support. After I shifted http://www.exclventures.com it loads faster.

  • http://www.exclventures.com John

    We need to appreciate that Servers do go down. The capability to shorten the period and actually turnaround the sytsem within a reasonable period would set apart the winning hosts. I am happy to report that that though they carry huge lot of websites, Host Departments has been doing well. I never had any issues. The databases work fast and there is 24 hour support. After I shifted http://www.exclventures.com it loads faster.

  • Pingback: Unofficial DreamHost Blog » Blog Archive » DreamHost 2006 - Year in Review

  • Pingback: DreamHost 2006 - Year in Review

  • http://www.geelake.com/ geelake

    This is a reply from an administrator from SiteGround:

    I can assure you that our servers are load balanced and very well optimized by our system administrators. Furthermore, they are constantly monitoring the servers and are doing their best to keep them in their optimal performance state all the time.

    As for your account, which currently resides on our shared server, it will be automatically suspended seven days after this ticket was opened, and due to the above mentioned reasons, we can no longer make any exceptions. If you consider the upgrade to a VPS as unworthy, then as least you will have enough time to transfer all of your files.

    —-
    Access count to my site on siteground < 100 ip per day

  • http://www.geelake.com/ geelake

    This is a reply from an administrator from SiteGround:

    I can assure you that our servers are load balanced and very well optimized by our system administrators. Furthermore, they are constantly monitoring the servers and are doing their best to keep them in their optimal performance state all the time.

    As for your account, which currently resides on our shared server, it will be automatically suspended seven days after this ticket was opened, and due to the above mentioned reasons, we can no longer make any exceptions. If you consider the upgrade to a VPS as unworthy, then as least you will have enough time to transfer all of your files.

    —-
    Access count to my site on siteground < 100 ip per day