What happened?
At approximately 1pm EST the EventEspresso.com website host, HostGator experienced a network outage. HostGator guarantees 99.9% uptime with all their dedicated servers which means that our website server should not be down (unexpectedly) for more than 9 hours the entire year—but yesterday alone our server was down for more than 12 hours!
We know this was really bad timing for everyone. Just 10 hours earlier we released Event Espresso 4.2 and began sending email notifications to users to download the update. We apologize for the interruptions and inconvenience this caused. We are taking actions to try and ensure something like this doesn’t happen again.
Going Forward
HostGator use to be very reliable, but the recent disruptions (this was not the first, nor the second interruption) indicate that we can not rely on them for the level of service we need for EventEspresso.com (99.9%+ up-time). Within the next 30 days we intend to move EventEspresso.com to a new hosting service that has a better infrastructure to meet those types of expectations and guarantees. Our hope is that any downtime in the future is intentional and/or scheduled.
This means that there will be some additional disruptions as we go through the process of changing hosts. However, we hope these disruptions are intentional, controlled, and relatively brief. Once we have made the full transition to another host we expect that you will find that the EventEspresso.com website loads faster and is more reliable.
Thank you for your patience, and please pardon the construction as we change the filters on the Event Espresso machine.
Ha! TRSN sports network broadcasts my grandsons college baseball games. They use HostGator and they had the same outage, right when my grandson was pitching. Now that is a real emergency! .I was able to contact them through Twitter and they sent me a link I could listen with, after the game was half over.I didn’t know that EE was down as well. Glad Event Espresso will not be using HostGator anymore, we can’t put up with that kind of un-reliablity!! Thank you!!
Sorry to hear that. Pretty crazy how we rely on things like web hosts to provide technology for our business, entertainment and to connect with friends and family, and we usually take it all for granted. But a business should be able to be relied upon (as far as expectations have been set) and we can’t rely on HostGator any longer.
That is very interesting. We host with bluehost and experienced the same outage at about the same time but ours was for for approximately 24 hours. Is there something going on with these hosting providers?
I think in the case of BlueHost and HostGator that they are the same company now and/or at least share a lot of the same infrastructure.
In my personal opinion, I think web hosts eventually start turning a corner and head down hill. Their technology gets outdated and they don’t reinvest like they should. That’s why we’re planning to move to a different (more advanced and innovative) host.
Bluehost, HostMonster, HostGator and JustHost are all four owned by Endurance International Group. The issue that hit affected EIG and trickled down to all four of the sub-companies. Sadly, thousands of sites were hit and suffered some SERIOUS downtime.
We are with Bluehost now, but seriously considering moving away from any EIG company as they are all starting to suffer from more and more downtime.
Anyway, thought the heads up on the four affected providers might help anyone looking to move away from one of them, so that they don’t end up in the same mess.
Thank you for the additional information, and pointing out the relationship between them all.
We had similar experiences with HostGator. 99.9% uptime is definitely a joke at this point. We’ve switched to WP Engine and have loved it…it’s on the pricier side but well worth it IMO.
Agreed. Our new host will be about 3 times the cost but it’s an entirely more robust infrastructure.
we like hosting companies like united internet in europe and their usa branch 1and1 they seem to have solid service once you get above the shared plans also they are the once that operate their own data centers and do not lease them like soo many other smaller hosts do