I love encountering examples of businesses coming up a cropper when they try to cut corners and save money. It certainly isn’t a reason to gloat but it serves as a reminder that, in this unforgiving world, you get what you pay for.
This following case study, to file in the EPIC FAIL archive, can be categorised under hosting. This ‘unnamed’ client had their website hosted with us and was paying a fair price for an excellent service. They are a high profile client and advertise seasonally on local television. Online bookings is a major income stream for them so any downtime for the website can cost them hundreds, if not thousands of pounds an hour in lost transactions.
Unfortunately the descision was made to move away to a cheaper host to save a few notes. The end result was that the allocated bandwidth allowed was exceeded very quickly and the website was taken down…
Bandwidth Limit Exceeded
The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later.
Impact
If your website goes down what impact could it have on your business.
- Lost revenue – If your website is ecommerce than lost sales is an obvious impact
- Lost customers – An unreliable website reduces confidence a buyer has in the website and the company. One lost sale may add up because that customer may never return.
- Lost reputation – Reputation takes a life time to forge and a second to lose. Getting a bad rep can only plague the business.
- Your time – Unsupported hosting can raise your stress levels. Typically you don’t have a direct support line to an engineer so reponse times can be slow. If your business relies on trade passing through the website you need a quick turn around time to get the site back up. Without this support your business is going to suffer with the first three point coming into play.
Website monitoring tools
If you have a mass of websites it’s hard to monitor them all, here are some tools to assist you. All offer a free/trial service and a premium service for advanced users.
Pingdom
My choice
SiteUpTime
Suggested by Jim at Think Synergy
Are My Sites Up?
Suggested by Graeme at Graemepirie.com and Michael at Saltytech.com
Root Internet
Suggested by Jonathan at Jonathan.thirkill.co.uk/
Conclusion
If you do the maths, is it worth saving a few pounds on hosting if it means losing more through lost sales, traffic and reputation? It’s one sum that doesn’t add up!
March 18th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Spot on, it’s only when things like this happen that people realise the cost of cutting corners. This is exactly the reason I refuse to compete with the cost-cutters on price. The lesson here is if something seems “too cheap” there is probably a reason for that. Out of the hosting customers I have lost, only 1 has not come back within 6 months…. that speaks volumes.
March 18th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Lost reputation is the key – if your site is broken I’ll try back in a few minutes. If I like you I’ll try again the next day. If it’s still broken I’ll assume you’ve gone under/are dodgy and I won’t go back again!
April 14th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
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