skwpspace yan pritzker’s home on the web

Bluehost database downtime continues for two months

I’ve filed 4 support tickets, called support, had them admit there was a problem, posted on Matt’s blog, and yet bluehost refuses to notify their customers that there are persistent database problems going on. So here it is - the public announcement - bluehost is having constant MySQL database downtime (over the last two months). I think they are acting very irresponsibly by not notifying customers of ongoing problems and/or not acting to fix them.

I was previously an ardent supporter of bluehost, but I’m not above taking my business elsewhere if no one steps up to take responsibility for the ongoing outages.

Yan,

Just ran across this comment. I have had a Bluehost website (www.michwine.com) for the last year. Several weeks back, the SQL database powering the site literally vanished — for reasons they will not explain — and support tells me they have NO backups of the site, despite their sales-page blurb of “daily, weekly and monthly backups”.

Result: Right now, I will be forced to restore the many-months old backup on my home computer.

Needless to say, I will shortly be moving my several accounts off Bluehost.

Joel

PS — Sent Matt Heaton and email and never heard back from him.

Joel - I am still on bluehost because of laziness but they have shown truly awful customer service. Matt Heaton is a lost cause, I don’t think he believes in customer service at all. Tried to email, leave comments on his blog, nothing. P.S. I found out THEY STORE YOUR PASSWORD IN PLAINTEXT. Yeah. The support girl asked for my password, and I told her she’s not supposed to need it, and she was like “oh I have access to it anyway..it is [...]” and just spells it out for me. Is this company entirely clueless about security as well?