Just to clarify, I no longer work at DreamHost. I’m a former employee (and, as with customers, our employee retention rate has always been pretty good – I was there just shy of 10 years, myself).

> DH pays comparable amounts to apply to be on a lists like the
> most Democratic, or green. Netcraft is similar, and
> “indicative” of hosting performance. Yes, Brett wouldn’t
> want that.

So, when called to support your “worst service record” position, you point to that list as some sort of proof that it sucks. Then, when told that DreamHost didn’t pay to be on the list (and given reasons why said list is meaningless), you imply that it’s because the uptime sucks.

Actually, the reason I say Brett wouldn’t pay to be on that particular list is because it’d be a bad return on investment: The ‘Most Democratic’ thing was interesting/unusual and resulted in some attention. The ‘Green’ thing was an outgrowth of our own internal decision to lessen our footprint any – stuff we decided to do anyhow, were proud of and figured might be of interest to customers and potential customers.

This… This is just a boring, flawed list. Anyone who reads the fine print would realize it is meaningless for finding a good host. DreamHost doesn’t spend much on advertising (aside from the Rewards program, which has been very successful), so when it does it is going to be on something unique and interesting. That particular list wouldn’t make the cut with Brett, nor with me if I were in his shoes.

The upshot is that this doesn’t support your original assertion at all.

Checking for returned GET requests to corporate sites isn’t demonstrable of anything – unless you honestly think an advertising-centric company like GoDaddy is going to give your site anywhere near as much TLC as their own. Checking any single site isn’t going to provide any sort of meaningful statistic of use to potential customers, let alone their main corporate presence.

Anyhow, if you have anything else halfway solid to base the “worst service records” assertion on, I’d be interested in seeing it.

- Jeff

There’s a lot of that.

> I’m pretty sure Brett (Dh Marketing Poobah) would never pay to be placed on a list like that.

http://www.worldblu.com/scorecard/question10.php

DH pays comparable amounts to apply to be on a lists like the most Democratic, or green. Netcraft is similar, and “indicative” of hosting performance. Yes, Brett wouldn’t want that.

Here’s a site I found that says DreamHost has 99.98% uptime (again, based on the performance of the main corporate site).

http://www.webhostingstuff.com/uptime/DreamHost.html

Which, again, doesn’t mean much as this is just for a single corporate/sales site. In fact, that actually sounds a little high to me, but then again when I worked at DH I didn’t deal with downtime issues much (in later years, at least).

Anyhow, I think most people are interested in their personal web and email servers, and that’s not nearly as easy to condense in a report such as this.

My impression (having seen it from the inside) is that most people have phenomenally good service with a relative minority having hit upon some pretty bad problems. It seems that some servers/clusters have more trouble than others, really.

While perhaps not the absolute best ever, I’d put DH up against any comparably priced shared hosting provider when it comes to reliability any day.

Just my 2 cents, as a former DreamHost employee (who hosts stuff here and wants good uptime as well)… :)

- Jeff

From the site:

“If you represent a hosting company and would like to be included in the table, we charge 1200 GBP per annum for inclusion. Please mail us at sales@netcraft.com if you would like to be included.”

I’m no longer at DreamHost, but I’m pretty sure Brett (Dh Marketing Poobah) would never pay to be placed on a list like that.

Also, it looks like they base it on the server where the company’s corporate site is located – not those servers that customers will end up on:

“Using the performance of a hosting provider’s own site to determine the performance of the hosting companies network, is only indicative.”

Regarding GoDaddy, I don’t doubt that their corporate sales site has stellar uptime. You spend $2.7 million dollars on a super bowl ad and beyond even that for celebrity endorsements, you make that sort of thing a priority.

- Jeff

GD is #16. DH doesn’t make the list.

http://uptime.netcraft.com/perf/reports/performance/Hosters?tn=november_2008

Now watch as your brainwashed flunkies insult me in their throes of denial.

That’s how morons always end their posts. Tacking that on the end of a retarded post doesn’t make it any less retarded.

It’s the same as saying, “I’m a complete jackass and I should expect people to point that out, but if I point out the obvious at the end of my post, I’ll trick myself into thinking I’m clever.”

Do you think the fact that they’re one of the biggest hosts in the world might have something to do with the hundreds of thousands of happy customers? Yeah, that’s ALWAYS a sign of horrible service.