What do you do when your server(s) goes down?
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How do you communicate to your customer that you have a server problem or they have a domain problem?
1) Send out an all customer E-Mail
2) Post a notice at the Help Desk Page / Support Forum
3) Place a phone call to all of your customers.
4) Wait for the customer to:
....A) E-Mail / IM
....B) Phone / Fax
....D) Help Desk/Ticket
....E) Support Forum
5) Nothing
6) Combination of the above (please list).

What happens if your ONLY server goes down?
Do you have an "other website/e-mail server" for that purpose?

Do you maintain an "alternate web site" that your customer can reach?
Does your alternate web site "kick-in" when your main site is down?

Can you route your nameservers to site 1 then to site 2 if site 1 is down?

Do you provde any alternate way for your customers to communicate to their customers that they are having problems on their web site and that their host is working on the problem?

We use our forums to announce any issues. trying to get people to look their first is the hard thing to do. They always want to put in a ticket or call when all they need to do is just look at the forum. We have a bunch of servers and our main web site is hosted on its own server so we will always have support resources available should any server ever go down.

If it is going to be more than 20 minutes we will send out emails.

Tough one. Well if your only server goes down, then you don't have a choice but to bring it back online, then communicate clearly as to what happened, what you're going to do to take care of it and prevent it from happening.

Run your business based on the communication and you'll see good response from your customers. They're usually forgiving in most cases, unless they're the sub-five dollar type that want 24/7 phone support and 1000 GB of disk space...

Hello,

Its difficult to answer this question when you have not had a server go down since December. A typical issue like the one in December was handled by e-mailing the clients after the fact to explaining the issue.

Several clients did the IM/Ticket/Phone thing. Which we might begin to announce is on the phone system as an option to click that is only available when there is an issue.

The only issue I have with communicating by e-mail is some individual use there site e-mail to communicate with companies and if they cannot receive an e-mail because the server is down it causes some problems.

Company announcements work well too.

I e-mail my customers... I have an alternate e-mail for the company just in case the server goes down. I e-mail my customers a link to the alternate helpdesk and forums.


thats what I do

Your hosting site should not be on the same server NOT should it be in the same data center or even the same state. Build a relationship with a MIN of two data centers.

It doesn't matter how you tell your users what is going on as long as the user's are used to the method chosen and you tell them. Most will understand everyday problems. Now if your server is falling like a pack of hit-cakes, time for a new data center, host or server!

Tough call, I would have to send out an all customer email, and respond to any IM's clients send me as well.

Well these days its not easy to deal with clients specially if your sever goes down in regular basis, They will wanna move out to another host, so itz always nice to keep your severs up most of the time, and if your experiencing regular downtimes, change your severs as someone mentioned.