Good But Starting To Worry

[JayDog]

I have been with hostgator for at least 2 possibly 3 years on 2 seperate accounts. By me being here this long tells you that they are good. I have however noticed more downtime in the last 2 months than ever before. These downtimes are usually short 2-10 minutes each but just find it odd that there have been like double or triple downtime notices the last 2 months than in my 2-3 years here. I am home so when I get a notice I go and check and sure enough the sites are down. I emailed support regarding the last 2 months and the email gets forwarded to level 3 support where the response is most third party monitors are inaccurate. I have tested tons of uptime monitors and found this to be true as well, however the one I am using is very accurate and set to 1 minute monitoring and I am home to verify the downtime on my end. So my review is A for the last 2 years, quick support although I think more details could be provided in emails. My review for the last 2 months is C due to the constant everday short downtimes and the response from support saying third party monitors are usually inaccurate after I explained to him that I have tested tons of them and that I am home to verify downtime on my end. I am on an older server so it should be filled? I would expect this from a new server as clients are added to fill it up, but on a old server I would think it would be settled by now. So in total I think HostGator is good but recently I am starting to get worried. Server was just down again however for a longer period which was blamed on load, eliminate recent downtimes & high server loads and I'll stay another 2-3 years, if this continues I'm gone.

February 6th Stats
February Uptime 98.770
Downtime 1hr 33 Minutes

[JayDog]

Just an update, I talked to lyron, tim greer and a handful of others regarding this "skyline" problem and all seem to be concerned but the problem continues, another 20+ minute downtime last night. I would like to say HostGator has been the best host ever over the last 2+ years but with the recent 2 month downtime issues I will need to look for a new host today. If I wish to offer a 99.9% guarantee to my customers I need my provider to offer this as well. I refund customers if 99.9% is not met. I do not wait for customers to request this as HostGator does. I automatically refund them if the service they pay for is not met. I guess I should be happy I received 2+ years of good service which is hard to find. Hate and I mean hate to leave but I guess that is the only way to solve this as I can't wait for a solution at the cost of downtime.

[JayDog]

In fairness to HostGator I have decided to hold off on my move for a few days. Basically the last 2+ years have been good besides the last 2 months. I will wait a few days to see if things are back to normal. If so I will be staying right here. If things continue then I have a new host already lined up. My decision to hold off is based on the previous good experience with hostgator. Hopefully everything is back to normal as I do not wish to move.

[JayDog]

guess not, keeps getting worse...

February stats as of february 9th

99.035% Uptime
2 hr 1 minute downtime

[JayDog]

problem is you get a different person everytime you email about a problem so you have to explain the same thing over and over which makes you even more frustrated, they did credit this month but don't seem to wan't to switch me to a new server even though Tim Greer and Lyron said they would do that if problems persist, I will be moving tomorrow as I guess paying my bill on time every month for 2+ years doesnt mean anything here, plenty of other hosts that will take a long term customer with no problem

[GatorBrent]

Don't worry about anything =)

Problem started on skyline few days ago because of a customer who's been on the box about as long as you. His account vecvn.com began getting more traffic than the box could handle crashing it. We suspended that site than another of his had the same problem vnbizcenter.com

This site is currently suspended and we decided to boot his entire reseller account do to all the ongoing issues. The total downtime is somewhere around 30 minutes but many monitoring services are going to report much higher while the site is up even right now. Here is why..........


Even with his site suspended the traffic is still coming in representing all of the traffic on the server looking like the below......



6-0 22056 0/287/10257 _ 5.11 3 16 0.0 0.81 40.88 58.186.110.26 skyline.websitewelcome.com GET /suspended.page/? HTTP/1.1
7-0 20705 0/459/10423 _ 3.81 0 348 0.0 0.41 36.77 58.186.26.6 skyline.websitewelcome.com GET /suspended.page/? HTTP/1.1
8-0 22061 1/304/10278 W 3.11 3 7 0.0 0.66 33.74 222.252.40.199 skyline.websitewelcome.com GET /suspended.page/? HTTP/1.1
9-0 22519 0/238/10202 _ 2.24 0 6 0.0 0.18 29.64 222.253.138.13 skyline.websitewelcome.com GET /suspended.page/? HTTP/1.1
10-0 5624 0/4556/9526 _ 56.50 9 327 0.0 8.99 31.04 58.186.25.13 skyline.websitewelcome.com GET /suspended.page/? HTTP/1.1
11-0 22193 0/278/10243 _ 2.54 0 6 0.0 0.41 33.15 203.210.249.44 skyline.websitewelcome.com GET /suspended.page/? HTTP/1.1
12-0 31014 0/4977/9957 _ 55.88 0 365 0.0 11.81 40.50 203.210.237.233 skyline.websitewelcome.com GET /suspended.page/? HTTP/1.1


Now the server is not really down and people visiting your site will get to it, but because of all the incoming traffic flooding it any monitoring pinging etc will be delayed a few seconds because of the flooding of the traffic. Monitoring services aren't set to wait that long so they give up and report it as down even though a human would end up waiting a few seconds longer and it would not be down for them. With this person's entire reseller account suspended they will update their DNS and once their DNS propagates somewhere else the incoming traffic will stop flooding the server and Apache load times will be back to normal. Give it a few days for their DNS to change and all will be back to normal.

[JayDog]

no offense Brent but I am home during the day and there was 2+ hours of downtime as of my last report which has been witnessed with my own eyes, I posted this thread on Feb 3rd and the first response comes on Feb 16th? I emailed tim greer, lyron, and a few other of your sales reps who I gave plenty of time to resolve this issue as I posted in this thread as well that I would wait a few more days for resolution. It seems that issues like this do not get escalated up the chain of command quick enough to resolve the problem. A reseller is only as strong as his provider so I have moved on. Stop blaming third party monitors as I am using one of the best out there with 1 minute monitoring (yes I have tested numerous monitors) and say we were slow in a resolution and lost a 2+ year customer. Focus on keeping your customers happy and they will stay forever, try to mass sell budget hosting at the cost of support and watch them leave. I moved my clients elsewhere because I can't wait for more downtime as this makes me look bad. Admit the problem and work on it, don't have 3 people agree with me and then the next sends me logs saying server has been up for 66+ days. No hard feelings as I have moved on and will not mention to where, but denying an issue exists or failing to find it fast enough has lost my business. Take Care, Jay

[GatorBrent]

I monitor the boxes myself 24/7 please provide your ticket number on the 2 hour downtime.

[JayDog]

no longer a customer brent so I no longer have those, your staff has already acknowledged problems to me and issued credit before I cancelled, my full story is here and the 13 day first response to this thread speaks for itself, talked to at least 4-5 members of your staff regarding this as well, you just claimed a few days ago this started when my initial post is from February 3rd a few days after problems began which confirms it took you guys a while to find out. Maybe next time a long term customer that has been on the same server for 2+ years makes a claim you will investigate the problem quicker. Once again denying the issue, send me ticket numbers? I think 4-5 of your staff should have them already as I had to make the same claims over and over because I kept getting a new support rep. If you wish to continue then I will say this. I dare you to use hyperspin 1 minute monitoring and post results for all of your servers in public view for your users and actually honor a 99.9% guarantee. If you search for uptime stats in forums you will find a thread where you basically say you refund for 2 hours plus downtime and anything less is prorated because the 99.9% uptime guarantee is worthless and you only offer it because everyone else does? I thought HostGator was a leader not a follower? I offer 99.9% uptime and full refund without customers begging for it from support staff. Something you may wish to try. This is what seperates quality from budget. I really didn't wan't this to get like this but your constant denial of problems is digging your own hole. I am no longer with you and am done with the subject.

[GatorBrent]

I do not actively monitor the forum and is not the place to get something resolved. If you could please PM me your email I could look up the ticket number you submitted.

I'm very curious to see what happened in your ticket. We monitor all the servers 24/7 and I am aware of any problematic ongoing issues issues. In fact since I responded your server that you were on has not had any more issues, and I was aware of issues before even reading this thread since I saw the alerts in our monitoring.


I do not wish to fight with you but I am always looking to improve things, and if you're right about something going on for weeks without me knowing I need to know which is why I'm asking for the ticket number or your e-mail to look it up.
You were happy with us for a very long time so that must count for something, and I do hope you will come back to us if you're not happy with your new providers. I can always be reached personally, and will look into anyone's problem without them posting here and work to provide them with a solution.