When Website Downtime Goes from Bad to Worse

Here at Alertra we often discuss the importance of using a reliable hosting company. If your host's servers go down, you want to ensure that the company will take the necessary steps to get your site up and running as quickly as possible. Even outages that last a few hours can cost your company significant profits and can cause you quite a bit of frustration. What if you were to experience an outage that lasted days? That's exactly what has happened to some Dreamhost customers, and the online community is abuzz.

What Has Happened to Dreamhost?

Apparently the hosting company was making some server changes and did have downtime planned. While many customers expected the planned downtime to last a few hours, however, the actual website downtime experienced has turned into days. As one Twitter member, Viajares Daniel Ruiz, tweeted, "I'm a Dreamhost client since July 2006. Now, after 5 days with my sites down I'm losing any confidence."

And Ruiz wasn't the only one complaining about the Dreamhost outage. Other customers of the hosting provider were found to be tweeting messages such as, "Website down a week. You haven't updated any info in 2 days and today you had the nerve to send me a bill. Unbelievable."

It would appear that not only has Dreamhost not updated its customers regarding the extended downtime, but they also aren't returning email inquiries regarding the issue. As our readers know, this is a big taboo in the world of website downtime.

Sometimes You Can't Afford to Go with the Flow

In the world of ecommerce, sometimes we find ourselves rolling with the punches. When downtime occurs due to a server outage or other issue with a hosting company, website owners often wait until the host resolves the issue and their site is back up and running. When downtime turns from hours into days, however, rolling with the punches and going with the flow is not an option. You need to take matters into your own hands to minimize the website downtime that your own site experiences. That may mean changing hosting providers altogether rather than just moving your site over to a temporary provider until the issue is resolved. After all, if a host is going to allow your site to be down for days without explanation, you're probably going to lose faith in the quality of service the provider can offer.

If a host is going to allow your site to go down for days without explanation once, it may indeed occur again. Rather than waiting for the outage to resolve itself and hoping for the best in the future, it may be time to begin shopping for service elsewhere. Hopefully you have backups of all of your website files so you can migrate your site during the outage. Changing hosting providers sooner rather than later can save your site's profits and its reputation.