99.9% uptime promise tested
There is currently a surge in Internet usage in South Africa, and one of the biggest growth areas in the country is data centers and website hosting.
While international hosting companies are typically cheaper and provide far higher monthly usage limits, local companies have done well to attract clients through superior service levels and locally hosted servers.
One of the biggest selling points of any hosting provider is the robustness of their hosting facility and uptime guarantees. 99.9% uptime guarantees have become synonymous with website hosts, but are these guarantees worth the paper they’re written on?
MyBroadband contacted four of South Africa’s largest web hosting companies – Hetzner, Web Africa, Afrihost and MWEB – to find out.
MWEB (http://www.mweb.co.za/)
MWEB is not only one of South Africa’s largest consumer Internet Service Providers, but also the only website hosting provider contacted which does not offer uptime guarantees.
More surprising is that MWEB Business, the division servicing companies, also doesn’t guarantee uptime. Their sales consultant said that the ISP merely provides clients with website space and a monthly traffic allowance.
In an official response MWEB and MWEB Business said that while they don’t make a promise in terms of uptime in their terms and conditions, or when selling hosting services, they have consistently maintained uptime figures better than 99.9% over the past 3 years.
“We are confident that we can improve on the existing 99.9% benchmark for our hosting services and would rather use existing customer experience as a measure of our stability rather than use ‘uptime’ as part of the sales pitch. We see a minimum uptime rating of 99.9% as an integral part of the hosting service and should be a given, rather than a feature or benefit of the product itself.”
Hetzner (http://www.hetzner.co.za/)
One of the largest and most respected web hosting companies in South Africa, Hetzner, guarantees 99.9% network uptime. Calling Hetzner’s sales department however sheds doubt on the value of this guarantee.
According to the Hetzner sales consultant they have never experienced downtime of longer than 4 minutes “except once when the downtime was 11 minutes”, still well within the monthly 99.9% monthly uptime limit of 43 minutes. This is however false information as there are numerous examples of downtime of longer than 43 minutes a month on the Hetzner network.
Hetzner officially responded, saying that the consultant that dealt with the call was ill-informed and responded outside her area of expertise. “This highlights a training issue, which will be addressed within our training structure,” Hetzner said.
The Hetzner sales consultant could also not immediately give feedback on what happens when downtime exceeds 43 minutes. After consulting a more senior staff member she said that subscribers will be refunded 5% of every 30 minutes of downtime after the 43 minutes. This means that users can experience 50 minutes downtime – which means an uptime below 99.9% – without receiving a refund.
Unfortunately Hetzner’s terms and conditions (T&C) fail to dispel the confusion. The hosting company states that subscribers will not be entitled to any credit if the ‘degradation of the Service is outside Hetzner’s control’. Other exclusions of refunds include downtime attributed to failure of access circuits to the Hetzner network or during scheduled maintenance.
Hetzner said that their track record when responding to a claim has always been in favour of the customer. “The uptime guarantee and corresponding refund policy indicates both the standard we endeavor to uphold as well as a willingness to be held accountable,” the hosting company said.
“Hetzner service disruptions and their duration are archived and transparent to the public via our network alerts (http://supportcentre.hetzner.co.za/).”
Web Africa (http://www.webafrica.co.za/)
Web Africa, well known for their excellent support, state that they have a 99.9% uptime guarantee on all their hosting packages. A quick call to the company’s helpline uncovers gaping holes in this promise.
The Web Africa consultant said that downtime is assessed on a case by case basis and that there may be rebates of some sort in the event of service problems caused by Web Africa.
When quizzed for more details about what the potential rebates and the service level agreements (SLA) look like, the sales consultant ran out of answers and simply said that their lawyers are working on their SLAs which will only come ‘at a later stage’. Web Africa has however been in the hosting business for years and it is unclear why they do not have SLAs available.
WebAfrica did not officially respond to these issues by the time of publication.
Afrihost (http://www.afrihost.com/)
Well-known hosting provider Afrihost can be seen as a shining star in the area of uptime guarantees. The company promises their shared hosting clients ‘100% website uptime or double your money back’.
When quizzed about the promise the Afrihost sales consultant said that any downtime will mean that clients can claim double their hosting bill back – no questions asked. The drawback of the offer is that this only applies to the company’s shared hosting, and that dedicated hosting clients don’t seem to be included.
“We have made a decision to pay any and all requests no matter what actually occurred. With our shared hosting options we have far more control over the servers and as such can institute certain procedures that can ensure any downtime is minimal,” said Afrihost CEO Gian Visser.
“Unfortunately due to the very nature of dedicated hosting solutions we do not have the same level of control [as with shared hosting] and as such any downtime a server suffers is not directly controlled by us.” Visser however points out that Afrihost is “very happy to enter into an SLA with any and all of our dedicated solutions which we will happily deliver on.”
Shop around before you buy
Prospective hosting clients will be well advised to shop around before settling on a website host. Money back and uptime guarantees provide partial peace of mind, but consumers should familiarize themselves with exactly what they can expect in the event of downtime or poor service levels.
99.9% uptime guarantee – what do you think it should mean?
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