The Importance of Customer Service

I experienced my first noteworthy downtime with Dreamhost today (about two hours), and the timing was terrible because it came moments after posting today’s intended entry. So anyone coming in through Technorati, their feedreader or Netvibes would’ve got an unpleasant surprise.

Apparently, several servers were hit with postal cluster issues. I have no idea what that actually means, but I apologize for the outage if you were among those trying to visit earlier. :)

It’s frustrating when something like this happens and it hinders the work you might have had planned for the morning. Thankfully Dreamhost has some solid customer service features, including a status site where they post news about maintenance, possible security issues, etc. They also have a testing tool accessible via login to your account, where you can get specific info about your domain if you experience problems.

I applaud them for that. At least they keep people in the know. I hosted some sites on GoDaddy for a few years prior to starting Design Adaptations and making the decision to switch providers - I don’t recall them ever offering that level of service, or any status checking tools. They are good at cluttering up their site with plenty of graphics and links to try and sell you more stuff though. :|

So despite the downtime, I’m still confident in standing behind my Dreamhost recommendation because of their sincere approach to customer service… at least if/until they prove me wrong.

Tags: site | site-management