Compensation for lost income when site down unacceptable time

[fruity]

Question from my client regarding their site that has now been down for nearly 3 days with Register365.com (as mentioned on other thread).

They were due to run an ad campaign this week which has now been lost - do they have any comeback on this? 3 days is surely unacceptable for a service provider to have a site down? I'm not sure where they stand, as it's not something i've dealt with before.

Cheers in advance...

 

[mneylon]

In simple terms, unless they have a service level agreement (SLA) from the provider they won't have any comeback

 

[fruity]

that's what I thought, but had to check i wasn't involved in registering the original site (or I would have used another provider, lol). cheers.

I'll be moving both clients over to yourselves anyhow Blacknight, as i've always been delighted with the service (which was non-existent with r365 my clients tell me). As a matter of interest - as the client will ask - is it possible for the client to negotiate an SLA with you guys - is it a commonplace thing?

 

[mneylon]

that's what I thought, but had to check i wasn't involved in registering the original site (or I would have used another provider, lol). cheers.

I'll be moving both clients over to yourselves anyhow Blacknight, as i've always been delighted with the service (which was non-existent with r365 my clients tell me). As a matter of interest - as the client will ask - is it possible for the client to negotiate an SLA with you guys - is it a commonplace thing?

We wouldn't offer an SLA on shared hosting, but would be more than happy to offer it on dedicated servers (as would most hosting companies)

Basically the problem is this

On a shared server you have no real way of knowing who is on there and what they are doing. To mitigate the impact of a badly behaved user (or an overly busy website) a hosting provider can restrict access to resources etc., but it's a balancing act

On dedicated servers the only user(s) are the client, so you can control the environment and give a higher level of guarantee etc.,

Of course some hosting providers will offer SLAs on shared hosting, but it's not a game I'd be happy playing

 

[Web Templates]

Most ToS do not allow you to collect in the event of downtime. They may give you free hosting for a month, but if you are down, that doesn't really matter. Something I learned a long time ago, some things are worth paying for. Reliable hosting is one. Free in the event of downtime is not good, if it means that being down costs you money.