What to Do When Your Web Site Hosting Service Crashes

A Web Hosting Article Contributed by Sarah Eaglesfiled

Help! My Web Site Hosting Service has Crashed!

First of all check to make sure you can access other websites on the internet. It may not be your web site hosting service that has crashed, but your internet service. Visit a couple of sites, and include a couple of sites you haven't visited before. It's possible that your computer is calling the pages from its memory (the cache).

If you can visit other websites without a problem but can't get to your own website, it's possible that your web site hosting service has crashed. Stay calm. Your Web site hosting service provider will (probably) get it back for you.

Check the Web Site Hosting Service's own website.

Is your web site hosting service's website currently accessible? If you can get to their site without a problem, you can deduce that the technical error is with the machine where they host your website. If their website isn't online either, contrary to what you would expect, that's a good sign. It means that they are probably already aware and working on the issue. It could be a power outage in their area, or they could just be rebooting the machines. Patience is a virtue, so give it 15 minutes and see if your website comes back online.

Call the Web Site Hosting Service help line.

A good web site hosting service should have a status message as well as a hold message on their phone, where a re-recorded voice will tell you of any known problems. If the problem you are calling them about has already been acknowledged on their status message, you may as well hang up. Explaining what is already a known issue to the support team just eats up the time they could be spending solving the issue. If you absolutely must contact them, drop them an email instead.

If the problem isn't on the status line, hold and get put through to a support representative. They will either be able to see what's causing your problem then solve it whilst you're on the line, or they will promise a call back. If they promise a call back, ask for an estimated time of response and get a call reference number off them (or at the very least, get the name of the support representative you are talking to).

If they don't call back within an hour of when they promised, check your website, and if it still isn't operational give them a call back.

Ask the Web Site Hosting Service for a refund.

If your web site is down for more than a 24 hours, then phone up their customer service department and ask for a refund for the day's outage. If they fail to get your website operational after two or three days, demand they find an alternative machine to host your site on or give you a refund for the month. Nothing speeds up a technical resolution like a customer asking for their money back.