DreamHost Blog » Super Lame Apology

Super Lame Apology

February 28, 2007 on 10:14 pm | In Business, Foobars, Insider View, Musings, Rants, Updates by Josh Jones |

We are all really bearry sorry about the extended downtime this Sunday from the planned power outage!

The power was only out for about an hour, but as it came back on, there was trouble, trouble, trouble. Our router started acting funny, some file servers were mis-configured, some web servers didn’t want to come back on, and so on, and so on, and so on…

Although most things were back up and running within the five hours, the network in general was still flakey for about 8 hours, and everything wasn’t TOTALLY fixed for about 36 hours.

We really thought things would go a lot smoother, given that for once we had some advance warning, but good old Murphy was in full effect, y’all, again.. urgh.

Anyway, to try and make up for it a little bit, we thought we’d offer something we’ve never offered before at DreamHost, something we thought we’d never need, something we always thought a little silly… an SLA!

Even GOD is sorry!

That’s right, I’m offering you a… Super Lame Apology!

HA ha ha! Oh, did you think I meant a “Service Level Agreement”?

But really, isn’t that all a typical SLA is?

“We’re sorry we broke our promise, here’s credit for the 46 minutes you were down. Sorry.”

Lame!

In web hosting, it’s usually a credit for the exact amount of time you were down, sometimes a full day’s worth, or I guess if you are really paying a lot, a month’s worth.. though an SLA like that even in the high-end business world would be a rare animal indeed.

Animal ate it! Sahhhhry!

In the case of the outage this past weekend, if you were paying $8.95 a month you were down for anywhere from 6 to 44 cents worth of service. What would you think to yourself if we automatically credited you 44 cents on your next monthly bill?

You’d probably think either:

A. Is this 44 cent credit because February only had 28 days?

B. My site is down for hours and all I get is 44 cents?! That barely pays for the stamp I’m going to need to mail my foot all the way up your butt, DreamA$$Host!!

In fact, even if we gave you a full month’s credit, $8.95, you’d probably think the same thing. Either A. you didn’t really care, and the money doesn’t matter, or B. you really did care, and the money doesn’t matter.

The truth is though, we do offer an “SLA”… the same “service level agreement” you’ll find at McDonalds, Nordstrom’s, Staples, or just about any other successful business. If any customer ever comes to us with even an eigth-way legitimate gripe, we’ll do our best to fix it, even if it means giving them an account credit or their money back (even after our 97-day money-back guarantee period). Better to lose a customer on good terms than on bad, eh?

Oscars, Naked American Idols, DreamHost.

So, if we’ll happily give refunds anyway, why not go ahead and lay it all out in a “real” SLA?

I guess mostly because we feel they’re B.S. Case in point, we actually have SLAs from our data centers! Which is why I sleep sowell at night, knowing our servers are safe and sound. HA!

Not only do they fail to meet the SLA, I believe we’ve never gotten a single service credit out of them for outages… and I’ve asked!

The only useful thing you can get out of an SLA is the ability to break a long-term contract without penalty. All you really want is for everything to just work. If you’re constantly having to exercise your SLA, you’d trade all the service credits in the world for a new provider!

If that’s not the case, you don’t really care about the downtime and are just complaining to get the money! Shame on you! Go back to fatwallet.com where you come from! Hissssss!

All I’m saying is, since we’re in an industry with such a low barrier to entry, and since there’s nothing stopping you from switching hosts at any time, we really already have a lot of incentive to make our service as good as we can.

I know we fubar it sometimes, and I know we fubar it a lot, and when we do, you guys are doing the right thing by bitching and moaning and even quitting us. But a service level agreement wouldn’t change a thing.

So, so-o-o-o-o-o-o-orry!

And that’s the Super-est, Lame-est, Apology-est SLA you’re going to get!

154 Comments »

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1

Thanks for the great service!

Comment by A — February 28, 2007 #
2

just kidding, your service sucks!

Comment by A — February 28, 2007 #
3

see http://doted.info

Comment by Ribin — February 28, 2007 #
4

We don’t need your apology.

We need to know that you have learnt some lessons and that you are about to change things according to what you have learnt.

And that you are looking under the carpet for things you have to change for preventing future SLAs.

Comment by Hanan Cohen — February 28, 2007 #
5

I recommend we have monthly total power outage tests so we can practice for the sort of unexpected technical difficulties that are caused by complete building power shutdowns.

Who’s with me?!

Comment by Pete — February 28, 2007 #
6

Good point, with shared hosting outages happen, you just have to remember that its so cheap you are saving so much money and if your site needs to be up 24/7 you need to pay more per month for a vps or something in a non shared environment.

thanks, Ben
http://www.webhostingunleashed.com/

Comment by bwb — February 28, 2007 #
7

What about a free week disk/bandwidth upgrade?

Comment by Julio Biason — February 28, 2007 #
8

How much are you pulling in per month again? 350,000 accounts at a minimum of $8 is 2.8 MILLION per month. Minimum. I left my old provider because they cost more and didn’t provide all the features Dreamhost does. I don’t expect 99.9% uptime out of Dreamhost, but this plus last summer’s meltdown are totally unacceptable. This would NEVER have happened at my previous provider.

You need to spend more of your income hiring more people who know how to keep a network stable (including core redundancy) at all times. Your non-solutions to problems (moving servers, offering lame workarounds or no solution at all to mail problems instead of FIXING them) are telling. It’s unprofessional. And no, a LOL SORRY HEHE message doesn’t cut it.

If I wasn’t so hooked on the combination of many databases + shell which other hosts don’t match, I’d be gone already.

Comment by Gordon Morehouse — February 28, 2007 #
9

Check google 4 “disaster recovery training”

my 2 cent

Der Klempner

Comment by Der Klempner — February 28, 2007 #
10

[...] According to the official Dreamhost Blog, things did not go according to plan. [...]

Pingback by Club Troppo » Site Downtime Update — March 1, 2007 #
11

What a bunch of whiny mofos.

YOU USE SHARED HOSTING! IF YOU WANT 100% UPTIME, PAY MORE!

I work for a hosting company and people like you can just rot for all I care. You don’t go down to the power company and raise hell when your power goes out. You just piss and moan in the privacy of darkness. You only complain here because you have an avenue.

Dreamhost’s announcements wouldn’t be so snarky if all its customers weren’t such assholes.

Comment by Kenny — March 1, 2007 #
12

How much would it cost to have an emergency power generator that would keep things running for 48 hours in case of problems like this again?

Comment by Chuck — March 1, 2007 #
13

All of my sites are down right now.

http://www.articlewheel.com
http://www.linkchannels.com
http://www.myspacetopia.net
http://www.earthweaver.info

Comment by gio — March 1, 2007 #
14

I’m new @DreamHost, but for me they are way better than all the other shared hosting companies that I researched before picking DH. At least DH is straight with us and tells us what the hell’s going on when there’s a problem. Compare that to the steaming loads of BS that you get from the call-center drones when you try to contact your phone company, electric company, airline, etc. So, I agree with Kenny. Shit happens, quit whining about it, and enjoy the humor!

Comment by Brett — March 1, 2007 #
15

I’m sick of seeing people moaning about the down time. I didn’t even notice it (probably due to my down time)

As magical as the guys and girls at dreamhost are they cannot for see the future.

It also seems to be the people with sites which aren’t worth being on the internet which moan as well. so essentially dreamhost is doing the internet a favor by the small amount of down time.

The only reason people should have to be annoyed is if they loose a lot of business from the site down time. BUT if your a website in which a few hours of down time will effect your capital gain/turnover GET THE HELL OFF SHARED HOSTING! and invest in a redundant server on the other side of the world for the off chance that HARDWARE DOES BREAK and SOFTWARE DOES DECIDE TO RANDOMLY CHANGE ALL THE SETTINGS which effectively messes up the whole network.

Thanks for the great service currently you have a customer for life out of me and it will take a little more than a bit of down time to get me to move host.

Stop moaning about the hosting when you haven’t even bothered to learn basic design concepts and simple HTML/CSS standards

Comment by John Knowles — March 1, 2007 #
16

For about three years, I’ve managed three DreamHost accounts concurrently. Maybe every six months, DreamHost services are unavailable to me for a few hours.

I have no problem with that.

The Crazy Domain Insane! plan DreamHost offers is such an outstanding value that it makes those few hours of downtime negligible.

But I’m not running one of those mission-critical blog apps that absolutely positively must have 112% uptime.

Comment by Russell — March 1, 2007 #
17

Stop moaning you little whores… I know all about your 3 page websites and the billions of dollars you lost in those few hours of downtime when those 5 visitors (you, your mommy and daddy and your 2 mates) couldnt find your crappy little site on the internet.

$8 a month and you need an all inclusive holiday package with a 7 day cruise aswell dont you ?

get a life… even if you have a dedicated server at best of data centres, I can gurantee that you will not have 100% uptime…

Comment by Parminder — March 1, 2007 #
18

[...] post by Josh Jones and software by Elliott [...]

Pingback by Super Playstation 2 » Super Lame Apology — March 1, 2007 #
19

One question remains: when will the Panel be back on-line? I need to do some DNS pruning…

Comment by Doug Stewart — March 1, 2007 #
20

I run a multitude of small sites on my dh account, none deserve a dedicated server, and if I had them all in different small virtual accounts I’d be paying a large amount compared to the dh package and they’d all be going down at random. Dh has great uptime for a virtual host, except for force majeure like sunday’s thing and last summer’s outage.

Can’t complain.

Comment by Nestor — March 1, 2007 #
21

thanks for your SLA, I liked this post too much that i even feel ashamed to pay u so little for a month.

I make myself feel better, i have to quit using DH

Comment by anacel — March 1, 2007 #
22

I know we fubar it sometimes, and I know we fubar it a lot, and when we do, you guys are doing the right thing by bitching and moaning and even quitting us.

WHY CAN’T I QUIT YOU?!

Comment by Kevin — March 1, 2007 #
23

Wow, I switched to dedicated on a different provider just 2 days before… guess I got lucky.

With dreamhost I had my ups and downs, mostly up though, just I could not afford the downs anymore. Still great bang for the buck if you happen on the right server. I’ll keep an account here for a while more.

Comment by Matteo — March 1, 2007 #
24

As really many people have already pointed out, if you can’t afford the downtime, pay more.

BUT, I took some security measures anyway:

1) Moved my email to Google Apps. Nice. :)

2) Moved my DNS to a different provider, so I can set up an “emergency” page if I want to next time this happens (and shit happens — live with it).

This way, my two greatest annoyances are gone. I can get to my email even if Dreamhost is down, and I can quickly switch my domains somewhere else (they have a TTL of 3 hours).

And if my sites go down, I’ll survive. It’s not as if they’re important or anything.

Cheers to the world!

Comment by mafu — March 1, 2007 #
25

I agree with what some people above said - I think people moan way too much over a little downtime. If you’ve got a website/service that depends on high uptime, you really should be going for a premium service and not some shared hosting.

The age-old saying still rings true: “You get what you pay for”.

Comment by Flippystore Electronics Blog — March 1, 2007 #
26

Err…

I’m a well-known person for calling on DH to get their stuff straight; however, I think people are being fairly unreasonable as of late. Downtime is a fact of life–period. You want to have something more reliable, sure go and spend $50+/month for a VPS solution or about $100+/month for decent dedicated solutions…and these usually come with their own set of headaches (i.e. constant guarding of security, system performance, etc.). If you’re hosting a business-critical site on shared hosting environment it’s YOUR fault not DH’s if things go awry. But of course, we all know most people complaining do not actually have any mission-critical things running/hosted. It’s usually pseudo-geeks who get excited when their one-click WordPress install works(!) as if installing WordPress from source was any more difficult…go figure. And start complaining when their beloved web blog is not reachable by all three people who read it.

Face it, you’re paying dirt/month for a wealth of services and facilities…the least you can do is cut them some slack.

Comment by Toord — March 1, 2007 #
27

You guys are like 5 year olds. How can any business take you guys serious enough to have you host there website. This apology was written like a 3rd grader, and you should be ashamed of yourself.

Comment by jahjah — March 1, 2007 #
28

“How much are you pulling in per month again? 350,000 accounts at a minimum of $8 is 2.8 MILLION per month. Minimum.”

Are you stupid in all aspects of life, or would math and common sense be your only weak points?

Comment by WAAAAAMBULANCE — March 1, 2007 #
29

This has been brought up multiple times before — we host 350,000 domains, not accounts, and the domain:account ratio is not 1:1.

Comment by Pete — March 1, 2007 #
30

@Chuck : There is a generator (actually 5 of them), but the nature of this repair did not allow them to be used. The bit of cabling that was replaced runs between the generators and our data center so running the generators would have just been a waste of fuel. Having to take down the power of an entire data center is unheard of and we’re not too happy with the building about this (we don’t run the building or the power).

@People : Healthy disagreement is good, but insulting each other is not so good!

Comment by Dallas — March 1, 2007 #
31

Heyyyyyyyyyy how about everyone stops chatting here and fixes sh1t. i cant access my panel - mysql which means i cant do my work which is obnoxious, almost as obnoxious as your “super lame apology”

Calling it what it is, DOES NOT make you righteous DH.
(i know what rushing to the garage to get the generators is like i’ve worked at a hosting company but DH - get your act together)

Comment by Anonymous — March 1, 2007 #
32

Heyyyyyyyyyy how about everyone stops chatting here and fixes sh1t. i cant access my panel - mysql which means i cant do my work which is obnoxious, almost as obnoxious as your “super lame apology”

Calling it what it is, DOES NOT make you righteous DH.
(i know what rushing to the garage to get the generators is like i’ve worked at a hosting company but DH - get your act together)

Comment by Dublin — March 1, 2007 #
33

[...] Update: DreamHost’s Super Lame Apology. [...]

Pingback by Unofficial DreamHost Blog » Blog Archive » Power Outage This Weekend — March 1, 2007 #
34

I wonder why DreamHost even bothered to announce this beforehand in the first place: If they had simply done it unannounced, most customers would have slept right through it, and aside from a few complaints, it would most likely have been a blip on the radar screen. DH tried to be a good host and give advance warning for downtime, but, after all, no good deed goes unpunished.

Comment by Emufarmers — March 1, 2007 #
35

Wow, who’d have thought that sometimes bits of the internet don’t work for short periods of time. I’ve never come across that before.

Comment by Noxin — March 1, 2007 #
36

To all those who suggested dedicated servers as a 100% uptime alternative: You haven’t used dedicated servers have you.

Yes, they are probably a little more reliable. But nothing is 100%. In addition to my Dreamhost account, there was a period of time when I had two dedicated services with Rackspace. They had occassional outages. And even though I was paying more than $1000 per month, when a server crashed, it still took more than 24 hours to get everything operational. Not only were Rackspace’s admins working on the problem, but they had me and an admin on my staff helping. And it still took more than 24 hours.

I also have a VPS. It sucks more than anything I’ve ever used. Maybe because its a Windows server, but that’s another story.

The bottom line is I’ve been with DH since 1996. I’ve had dediacatded and VPS servers with other companies. For the amount I pay and the effort that I put into sys admin work, DH is the best I’ve had.

The only reason I use dedicated servers is for something that needs 100% of the CPU or something where I need root access for customize installations. I do not go dedicated for 100% uptime because that isn’t an option anywhere.

Comment by Chad — March 1, 2007 #
37

DH is the best service i had..
Good work guys!

Comment by Agavriloaie Marius — March 2, 2007 #
38

Screw it all. I paid more at another provider for what pretty much amounted to 100% uptime, but whoa Jiminy, their support turnaround sucked. Their features sucked. Their admins were frosty and above talking to peons. Dreamhost may not offer 100% uptime, but they are far superior in every other way that matters to me.

If uptime is an issue, if you’re at risk of losing your very livelihood if your site is offline occasionally, consider that maybe you’re with the wrong host, and that you need to invest some money in a company that offers the services you’re currently expecting from budget hosting.

That is, don’t expect to buy diamonds with pocket change. That just doesn’t fly in that place we all like to call ‘reality.’

Comment by Ally — March 2, 2007 #
39

Thank you for the apology, DH….whether glib or not, it was nice of you to do so.

Comment by Helen & Gene — March 2, 2007 #
40

guys, come onnnnnn!! ¬¬
Dreamhost is one of the best hosts on the web!
You have forgot one of the most important things!
The relation between client and company!
And I guess Dreamhost breaks all dimensions when talking about client support and price and benefit…

Other thing, we are in the EARTH PLANET so things can do wrong
Sure that lasts months was a crazy over dreamhost, but come on!
Lets take easy with the guys cause they do and amazing job, not like other company like ‘the pla…’ that only sell hosts.

Dreamhost sells great services with a lotta of humanity for less!
That’s FOR ME is the most important!!

Comment by Bruno Oliveira — March 2, 2007 #
41

This type of thing is the exact reason I left DH. DH customers, there are better options out there!

Oh, that and the panel times out all the time even on super-highspeed and reliable connections. Blank pages upon login. Weird downtime. Long ticket times.

I went from $9/month to 98¢/month at a host that makes you pay for ONLY what you use. Don’t use 140GB of traffic a month? You don’t pay for it. Don’t use e-mail? You don’t pay for it. I won’t name names, but go looking for it if you’re interested. There are a few out there now.

Comment by lol — March 2, 2007 #
42

I’ve been with Dreamhost for 7 years now. Prior to that I’ve dealt with other web hosting companies and still do from time to time on behalf of friends websites. Its good to know what else is “out there”. I live in Canada and barely have a telecommunications network. Bell Canada has no competition. I live 30 minutes from Toronto, a self-proclaimed “megalopolis of technology”. Major auto manufacturers are located nearby. But Bell Canada has no desire to service any of us with high speed internet and we’re destined to always have shitty, old cloth covered phone cables buried in the mud, run through forests and hooked (hitch-hiking) on power line poles. No competition. We’re screwed. Tech help is in a 3rd world country with people speaking languages I dont understand.
Then there’s Dreamhost. Just look at the apology… theres pictures of American (North American) muppets, notes that say sorry….. Man…. where can you go to even get an apology if some asshole opens his/her door into the side of your El Camino in a parking lot? Where can you go where a company actually KNOWS they have a problem, and doesn’t BLAME the customer by first giving you a song and dance about how you need to disable your firewall, antivirus software, reboot, etc… all the time knowing that there is an issue at THEIR end? I kept close tabs on the support blog during the outtage and yes, I was pissed… but stuff happens. Look at it this was, there WAS a place to check in, read the problems of others and generally get a grip on what was going on. Nobody hid behind a 500 page manual of excuses or blamed us, the Dreamhost customers, or ignored us.
Been there, done that and switched to Dreamhost years ago because of that. The monthly Dreamhost “Lettery’s” only drive the point home that these folks actually have a pulse, give a damn and get the job done.
Kudos to Dreamhost. We all bitch and moan when things go bad, sure, I can ramp it up a notch too when my service hiccups… so here’s a big THANKS for all you do and all the downtime I’ve NOT had over the past many years!

Comment by Lori — March 2, 2007 #
43

I know someone thought they were being “hip” when they wrote the “cute” apology (muppet pictures and all), but please…I believe most of the DH customers are adults and would probably prefer an apology that was written for adults and a little more direct.

1. Identify the problem
2. Apologize
3. Outline plans for preventing future problems
4. Restate your commitment to customer service

The posted apology was very annoying. And to be honest, some of these comments about “stuff happens, deal with it…if you want 100% uptime, pay for dedicated hosting.” Well, those are just ignorant.

When I signed up for the “bargain” hosting service, no where did it say, “You get what you pay for.” Of course at no time did I assume my plan came with 100% up time, but I didn’t imagine the site availability would be a daily issue. Occasional disruption of service is expected for the plan I’ve purchased; however, daily problems (as I have been having since day one) and then childish aplogizes are completely ridiculous.

For what it’s worth, I am in the market for a new provider and am keeping a close on eye on a friend’s experience with hostmonster.com.

Comment by Bret — March 2, 2007 #
44

Dreamhost is great, the prices are great, support is great. Uptime, is not great. If Dreamhost would just give away a bit less bandwidth, and harddrive space, I think the uptime would be much better.

But I applaud you guys for being able to maintain the company. It seems that managing all those servers would be a bitch. The support requests would be the death of me.

Just my opinion.

Comment by Alex Hoover — March 2, 2007 #
45

Thats the best SLA I have read.. I work at a College and have fully dedicated on site servers with UPS and fuel generators… and I can tell you we are not 99.9% uptime… it’s a lot more complex… anyway I have my site on DH, and let them manage all that… for almost 8USD at month… I think is fair.

:D

Comment by vicm3 — March 2, 2007 #
46

Maybe it’s cognitive dissonance, or maybe I’m just to stuck on social psychology, but, no matter how much DH messes up, I still don’t want to leave.

Comment by Corinne — March 2, 2007 #
47

Hey Dreamhost!

I’ve got your cheapest account and rarely ever have a problem, yet there’s people that claim “daily problems since day one.” You guys playing favorites or something?

I didn’t care much for the SLA. “Sorry doesn’t cut it” as my dear mum used to say.

I do like it when you tell us technical details about what’s going on behind the scenes. What exactly went wrong? Whose fault was it? Are you going to hold their feet to the fire to make sure they don’t screw up again? What are you going to change about your setup to prevent similar stuff in the future.

Seriously, even if it’s something I need to read a book to understand, every detail makes me more tolerant of downtime and any other issues. That up-front full disclosure, not encoded in impersonal corporate-speak, is an advantage you’ve got over all the other hosts and services I’ve ever dealt with. It’s worth a lot to me. Don’t trade that for apologies or BS, and you’ll keep this customer, and my advocacy.

Comment by Mike — March 2, 2007 #
48

I still love you guys.

Comment by TubeRat — March 2, 2007 #
49

I am in the process of switching all my sites over to Dreamhost. Why?
1) I am tired of my sites being down several times a week! I’m tired of constantly hearing that emails to me are bouncing.
2) I’m tired of horrible support, and nasty individuals who seem annoyed they have to support you even though it’s their job.

Dreamhost has excellent costs, excellent services, excellent communication, and the best up time I’ve had with four different hosts since 1998.

If and when one of my future sites begins to pull in a regular amount of money, and I need to offer my customers 100% uptime, then I will need to look into spending way, way more money each month. But until then, this is a fabulous option, and always will be for the majority of web sites out there.

If you want to spend the money Amazon and Google spend on their servers, go for it. Of course google was down for me the other day, but let’s not talk about that.

Brian

Comment by Brian — March 2, 2007 #
50

If one has been having problems since day 1 and is evidently in the vast minority, then perhaps the problem doesn’t rest solely with the service provider.

Comment by Victimized — March 2, 2007 #

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Super Lame Apology

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