Email Outage 05/Dec

Anybody else not got incoming and outgoing mail?

Yes, the email servers are down. I only learned this after submitting my own trouble and submitting a "check" on the email server via the support page.

What is extra annoying about this, and the many other outages DH has has in the past couple of months is that they somehow "fail" to post these on their status.dreamhost.com.

What is the purpose of a status page if it *doesn't actually alert you to the status*. Seems just like a fake advert for saying "oh look, we've had very few outages".

Yes, down for me too. The status page doesn't have any information but the "check" function in the control panel states: "Outage verified: We are actively looking into resolving it. First reported 1hr 30 mins ago."

It's getting very embarrassing having to explain to my clients why they can't access email AGAIN...

It has gotten to the point that I no longer use my domain's email addresses; I use gmail for everything. Dreamhost's email servers are so embarassingly unreliable that I'm in search of a third party host to host the MX so I can once again use my domain's email for business and not have to rely on gmail.

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Forgive my ignorance - if I'm using the PHP mail function in a script (Expression Engine) would I be right to assume it would also stop working if DH is having mail server problems?

If it's using the mail servers' SMTP server, then yes. If it's just mailing from the webserver with a forged return address, then it will work fine.

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Bummer - that implies PHP mail has just been killed for both my non-profit sites and possibly my forum as well - although if I undersand another thread right, the forum may still work since it runs under cgi.

This is starting to get beyond a joke, I don't know how they've performed historically, but I've been having significant outages at least twice a week since signing up a couple of months ago.

It's a shame, as on paper their package offers everything I need, but if the basics don't work, the extras are meaningless. Can anyone recommend a company with a similar feature set but reliable mail (or at the very least, better communication about persistent problems)?

In reply to:

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What is extra annoying about this, and the many other outages DH has has in the past couple of months is that they somehow "fail" to post these on their status.dreamhost.com.

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As it says on the status page, " This site is hosted off our primary network and will contain information about any serious downtime issues. This page is only updated if our primary system is unavailable." So if the panel goes down, then look to status.dreamhost.com for answers.



-Matttail

> What is the purpose of a status page if it *doesn't actually alert you to the status*.

To mislead you as to the status, I fear. In my experience less than 10% of email outages are declared.

Edited by chrisjj on 12/05/05 09:44 AM (server time).

Have any of you had any experience with www.textdrive.com? It seems like a full featured host and it is also located in San Diego. I have a number of clients with Dreamhost, including a dedicated server, but if email keeps being unreliable, I am going to have to go elsewhere, or else my clients will.

> I don't know how they've performed historically

Poorly. But outages are not the worst DH email problems. Missing incoming messages and interceptability by other users of the same server rank higher in my opinion.

Except that nor is the outage declared on the "primary" system.

You got to that point before I could. The problem is, these "short" 1-2 hour outages that seem to happen frequently NEVER get reported anywhere on Dreamhost. And these "small" outages every few days add up to a ton of lost time (and email). It's only the "long" outages of several hours that get a lot of people complaining that get put on the status page; and it's usually put on the status page AFTER it becomes a big deal.

It's getting very difficult to rationalize these frequent outages. These can't possibly be technical problems. It seems like pure carelessness and/or mismanagement. Either way, I'm actively seeking an alternative MX host, and if the instability continues for much longer, I'm taking all of my business elsewhere. Although I'm sure Dreamhost doesn't care, because they get a ton of new customers every day who are oblivious to these problems.

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I'd be curious what their customer turnover rate is. It must be very high.

We're in the process of moving our MX out of Dreamhost. We're losing business by relying on them. In just a few weeks it'll be Sayonara! It's going to feel SO good!

> The problem is, these "short" 1-2 hour outages that seem to
> happen frequently NEVER get reported anywhere on Dreamhost.

Indeed. And the last one never got reported even in my incoming mail headers - DH managed to delay delivery for 1 hour without this showing up in the Received timestamps.

> if the instability continues for much longer, I'm taking all of my
> business elsewhere. Although I'm sure Dreamhost doesn't care,
> because they get a ton of new customers every day who are
> oblivious to these problems.

Seems so. When I recently I complained to DH that I wasn't getting the mail service I paid for, they offered me 6 months subscription cost to go away.

I've been with Dreamhost for several years now. I was amazed at their service within my first few months of hosting. I do agree that they are in fact having some major issues right now, but I am still reluctant to give up on them just yet. One reason including the fact that I have yet to find another host out there that offers ALL the features and capabilities that DH offers. Not even for an increased price.

A great resource that I do use with my site is websitepulse.net . This is an independent monitoring service at a very affordable rate that will notify you if your site or email is down.

> I have yet to find another host out there that
> offers ALL the features and capabilities that DH offers.

I'm more interested in what a host delivers than what it offers. But that's far more difficult to discover.