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Originally Posted by Alanmelon
But recent events are not as bad as they seem...that downtime only affected one server, so the percentage impact will be much less when considering all the other sites on the other servers (like mine  ) |
True, but if you're running a commercial site, the headline uptime figure provided by your service provider covering their entire operation is less relevant than the service level agreement you sign with them governing your specific site. The agreement I have with the host of our corporate site allows for only an hour or so per year downtime. If it exceeds that, we get pretty hefty rebates, which is nice for our budget, but if it's down for more than a couple of hours per year, we fail in our task of providing 24-7 media and investor information. As we are big PLC, failing to meet that commitment is a very big deal. For us, the fact that we get money back is incidental - the site simply has to stay up. If our site was affected in the way this one has been in the last couple of weeks, I'd have been on the carpet in a couple of very plush and senior offices explaining exactly what went wrong and how it is never going to happen ever again.
This is not to diss any particular webhost, and especially not iWeb, who are a generous friend to Cable Forum and its members. But you do have to match the scale and priorities of your operation and its website to those of the company that you wish to host it, and expect to pay accordingly.