Web Host

darren · 03-31-06, 08:05 AM

If your website crashes or is offline in any way and it is the fault of your host, what options do you have with regards to claiming back any money lost?

kris · 03-31-06, 08:28 AM

Some hosts offer uptime guarantees so that if your website is offline for more than a certain amount of time in a month you would be compensated in some way.

Lauren Stephens · 03-31-06, 11:26 AM

as a business owner, it is your responsibility to mitigate your damages and to prepare for such events as they are inevitable.

your clients have an agreement with YOU not with your host. you are the one who is legally responsible for anything that happens to them.

cant tell you how many times i have read on various forums about people whos host went bad and days later they are still complaining on the forums and waiting for their websites to magically reappear.

**Chris Gwynne** · 03-31-06, 04:09 PM

Ultimately, it lies on you. It is your responsibility to find a good host who has an excellent reputation. Failing to do this, only makes you seem less interested in your business.

As kris said, many hosts offer compensation after a certain amount of downtime period.

anne · 04-02-06, 09:23 AM

I go for a web host with an uptime guarentee and a regular backup strategy so that if my web site goes down, I have some assurance it will be back up, and intact, quickly. I also keep backups on my own PC too - I'd rather not have to worry about chasing a host for compensation.

Mike C · 04-02-06, 01:04 PM

My host has virtually no downtime, and when it does, it's for no more than about 2-3 hours. I don't press them for any money back because of the downtime. Like Chris said, ultimately, it lies on the customers. We should be aware of who we're doing business with.

Josie · 04-02-06, 05:34 PM

If you live in a large metro area or somewhere similar, I'd suggest maybe looking at local hosting services. The advantage there is that you can actually go their offices and see the set up. If they don't want you to see their set up (within reason of course), then I'd be wary of doing business with them.

It should be set up in your agreement what happens if the host is down for longer than the guaranteed up time. I agree that if the host is roughly in that ballpark of guaranteed up time, I wouldn't bother them for compensation if they go a little under it on occasion (all else being to your satisfaction).

It is your responsibility, but a good host will try to warn you of upcoming down times or unexpected outages and will have good backup procedures in place.

Super Mod · 04-04-06, 08:03 AM

A lot of web hosts have uptime guarantees as the people above have stated. However, acting on a guarantee with legal action would be kind of ridiculous in my opinion. There is so much that you would have to prove in court and it would cost so much money that it probably would never be worth it.

**Baby Boy** · 04-04-06, 08:15 AM

I agree with Spencer, although sometimes (from being a past webhost before) host's will not be up 100%, even if they say they will be 99.9999999999% of the time, they'll have atleast an hour or two of downtime a month. If a host only has an hour or two of downtime a month, then they are a good host. IMO, if they go over 4 hours of downtime a month (without it being scheduled) --- they're a bad host.

**Avix** · 04-04-06, 09:04 AM

If you read their terms you will see most companies have covered themselves against claims by saying something like they will refund the money for downtime and only if it exceeds a few hours... so for example if they were offline for a month you would only get a refund on a months hosting which for most people is under $30.

Basically even if your host includes a backup service you should take a complete backup very regularly. Mine is automatically done daily so if the worst case scenario happened I could personally copy the data to another server quite quickly, without waiting for trouble tickets and tech support people etc to fix it.