Uptime Guarantee - Good or Bad Idea?
- Thread starter hostlegal
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fdcservers
New member
It is a marketing tool.
I feel that web hosting resellers can not accurately provide an uptime guarantee since they don't have control of the server. Those who do post a guarantee most often just put it on their site for marketing. I have seen that very few resellers and actually most companies that have their own server do not honor the guarantee.
Like Mark said above it is actually a contract that is legally binging. I do not understand why most companies do not stand behind it. In my experience if you do fall below your guarantee for a month or whatever it is and you do reimburse a customer that notifies you of it, you will find they are pleasantly impressed and will project a very positive image of your company. This will lead to more referrals and so on.
Most companies like to see the money coming in but cannot stand the fact to give back a little money even knowing that taking that small loss will potentially generate alot more gain in the future.
Resellers that post an uptime guarantee need to understand that the server control is out of their hands, and if they choose a bad company with alot of downtime they are really going to suffer from it and will have no control over it. So research for them is a must if they want o post the guarantee.
Like Mark said above it is actually a contract that is legally binging. I do not understand why most companies do not stand behind it. In my experience if you do fall below your guarantee for a month or whatever it is and you do reimburse a customer that notifies you of it, you will find they are pleasantly impressed and will project a very positive image of your company. This will lead to more referrals and so on.
Most companies like to see the money coming in but cannot stand the fact to give back a little money even knowing that taking that small loss will potentially generate alot more gain in the future.
Resellers that post an uptime guarantee need to understand that the server control is out of their hands, and if they choose a bad company with alot of downtime they are really going to suffer from it and will have no control over it. So research for them is a must if they want o post the guarantee.
iNetManila
New member
Uptime guarantee used to be an issue when the hosting industry started but I guess the technology improved tremendously today and downtime is a minimal issue. In my case, even the cheapest web hosting service can guarantee 99% uptime and so far they stick to their word.
If you can provide a 99% or a 100% uptime guarantee, then backed up your word with a money-back guarantee to build trust and assurance from your clients. Just be sure that you outline your money-back guarantee in a thorough guideline/agreement.
If you can provide a 99% or a 100% uptime guarantee, then backed up your word with a money-back guarantee to build trust and assurance from your clients. Just be sure that you outline your money-back guarantee in a thorough guideline/agreement.
Yes We do for most of the times. I have promised my customers to provide 99 percent uptime, till last week it was 99.9 percent and now I have achieved 100 percent. I informed all my clients and they were all really happy about that. Uptime is the most important factor in any hosting business.
Whether you are a customer or a reseller, you have to look for uptime. But promising for uptime and compensating that with discounts wont work with any reselling accounts. So dont promise them if you are in doubt, nothing is 100 percent perfect in this world.
Whether you are a customer or a reseller, you have to look for uptime. But promising for uptime and compensating that with discounts wont work with any reselling accounts. So dont promise them if you are in doubt, nothing is 100 percent perfect in this world.
CrystalVPS
New member
We don't offer an uptime guarantee however if anything does happen we do usually give service credit.
Obviously there's many levels to uptime guarantees if we assume most are network uptime guarantees does this just cover the connection to the switch, guaranteeing the switch will always be available, does this cover traffic to their routers and once it's out of their network it's not their problem? If that's the case who do you talk to if their route to you is unusable?
Is the guarantee still good when there is hardware failure, or is this an exception? What about DDoS attacks? are these an exception? I've seen SLAs where there's so many exceptions it was hard to think of a cause of downtime that wasn't excluded
Even when looking at 99.99% uptime guarantee it still allows for a good amount of down time, and if you're down for 10 minutes but still maintain your 99.99% over whatever period you're choosing (let's say a month) you'll still get people moaning that you were down so broke your uptime guarantee.
When talking about hardware, however much you invest in a server you can't guarantee anything, you can obviously guarantee a replacement within X hours but then what if you have a power surge totalling 50 of your servers and you only have enough spares for 10? What happens to the other 80%.
This is why we just publish our reliability figures and compensate for major downtime.
Obviously there's many levels to uptime guarantees if we assume most are network uptime guarantees does this just cover the connection to the switch, guaranteeing the switch will always be available, does this cover traffic to their routers and once it's out of their network it's not their problem? If that's the case who do you talk to if their route to you is unusable?
Is the guarantee still good when there is hardware failure, or is this an exception? What about DDoS attacks? are these an exception? I've seen SLAs where there's so many exceptions it was hard to think of a cause of downtime that wasn't excluded
Even when looking at 99.99% uptime guarantee it still allows for a good amount of down time, and if you're down for 10 minutes but still maintain your 99.99% over whatever period you're choosing (let's say a month) you'll still get people moaning that you were down so broke your uptime guarantee.
When talking about hardware, however much you invest in a server you can't guarantee anything, you can obviously guarantee a replacement within X hours but then what if you have a power surge totalling 50 of your servers and you only have enough spares for 10? What happens to the other 80%.
This is why we just publish our reliability figures and compensate for major downtime.
We don't have an uptime guarantee but if there is an error that's beyond our control we will give clients who are effected a discount on their next billing cycle. However we will not provide credit for downtime if we have to perform maintenance on a server and it has been planned in advance.
But we do aim to provide at least 99.9% uptime
But we do aim to provide at least 99.9% uptime
InfiniteTech
New member
Check what uptime your server host gives. And then apply the same to your customer. No other go!hostlegal said:
MarbleHost.com
New member
Uptime guarantees are essential.
If you are a reseller, you have to have some kind of guarantee that you are getting what you pay for, right?
Obviously, it can't be down for the entire month.
Even a full day would be too much of a loss for most resellers.
So what kind of guarantee do you need to thrive?
As close to 100 percent as possible, right?
The same goes for your customers who have customers of their own.
If you are reselling and cannot get a guarantee from your provider that you trust will be compensated in time to handle any issues, then you need to look elsewhere or look into purchasing insurance on your uptime.
I don't feel that discounts are worthy of any downtime issues, at the least the customer should have an option of an immediate refund or the discount, and all of that should most definitely be outlined explicitly in your ToS.
If any specific customer needs a more reliable uptime than you can guarantee, I advise to work closely with them to find a resolution, as the most important customer of all is the one you are dealing with at the moment.
If you are a reseller, you have to have some kind of guarantee that you are getting what you pay for, right?
Obviously, it can't be down for the entire month.
Even a full day would be too much of a loss for most resellers.
So what kind of guarantee do you need to thrive?
As close to 100 percent as possible, right?
The same goes for your customers who have customers of their own.
If you are reselling and cannot get a guarantee from your provider that you trust will be compensated in time to handle any issues, then you need to look elsewhere or look into purchasing insurance on your uptime.
I don't feel that discounts are worthy of any downtime issues, at the least the customer should have an option of an immediate refund or the discount, and all of that should most definitely be outlined explicitly in your ToS.
If any specific customer needs a more reliable uptime than you can guarantee, I advise to work closely with them to find a resolution, as the most important customer of all is the one you are dealing with at the moment.
nutty professor
New member
Its better to give a true happening guarantee than having 99% or 99.9%. we can never predict how well the server runs, but we can monitor it continuosly to ensure up-time. No math can be employed here. Just uptime depends on service
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