I learn something every day. For example, a web hosting company that includes “web host” in its name doesn’t consider whether the sites it hosts are web-accessible in its uptime statistics. I found the following in my inbox today in response to my reporting yet another instance of blogan.net being “down”:

Please take into account that web service is down is not equal server is down.

I have rebuilt web service configuration files, started it and the summary web service outage time was about 5-10 minutes. All this time the server (Star) was online.

If I wasn’t getting a screaming deal or actually depending on my blog being up, I’d look elsewhere. As it is, I think I’m getting what I’m paying for.¹And an education, to boot! ;-)

Is this common? Do all web hosting companies only consider whether the OS is running in their uptime statistics?

Update: When I shared this post on Facebook, one commenter referenced the Wikipedia article High availability, which makes a distinction between “uptime” and “availability.” My host guarantees “three nines” uptime, which it easily meets. I would guess availability is closer to 99.8%.

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  And an education, to boot! ;-)