This month GoDaddy servers went down. I was in the middle of updating a site; I had just added a user to a Drupal account and thought I had let in a breach. I immediately looked at GoDaddy�s system alert site that showed green, no problems. I called tech support and he also said there were no reported problems. Next, I switched to live chat which connects customers to more knowledgeable technicians, level 2 techs. His first response to my panic that I had lost contact with my server was, “We currently are experiencing network issues due to our primary network provider experiencing downtime.” A gush of relief came over me now knowing my server had not taken a fatal blow, and that the 50 calls I was going to start receiving any minute were not going to be voicing their frustration directly at me! Turning to twitter to inform others about this too frequent problem with #godaddy #serverproblems hash-tags, my tweet was instantly picked up and retweeted showing many others were also looking for answers as to why their sites and mail were down. So far in 2015 there have been 10 days where outages have lasted for over an hour.
So the dilemma is – is there another service provider with a better record of up time. Two years ago I wanted to leave, as their tech support were about the same level of intelligence as kindergartners and they had just taken away a 30% monthly discount that they had given me for over five years. I should have left then, as every year I acquire more customers, with heavier sites that are using databases or SSL certificates and it is becoming more difficult to even broach that question.
In a quick search I have found a source top10bestwebsitehosing.com that serves this list:
- iPage.com
- web.com
- justHost.com
- bluehost.com
- fatcow.com
- inmotionhosting.com
- webhostinghub.com
- networksolutions.com
- hostgator.com
- godaddy.com
I have heard of several of these companies but will have to do a more in-depth search before venturing into moving all my client domains into uncharted territory. Your comments and suggestions are welcome.
More to come…