Mail originating from web servers delayed.
Due to an intermittent problem with the mail server that processes outgoing messages from the web servers some messages may be significantly delayed in their delivery. We are doing what we can to resolve this situation and try to prevent it from happening again in the future. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
Update 8am: This is now fixed. Our outgoing mail servers from web servers had managed to accrue over 1.25 million emails in their queue from web servers and this was keeping them from sending email. The only thing to do to get them to work again was to turn their ability to accept incoming email off for a bit (yesterday) so that they had time to send out the massive queue they had. Yesterday at about 3pm I turned on incoming email again, which made all the web servers send them their entire queue (about another 800,000 emails). However, as of this morning the queue has about 400 messages in it so we are all good again. In part to make this work better I’ve tweaked the settings in a way that allowed them to send over 2 million emails in the space of 24 hours, which should keep this from happening again.
.
February 11th, 2008 at 8:22 am
Oh my aching mail-server! Cmon dudes, get this fixed.
February 11th, 2008 at 8:35 am
When we getting our mail back up? We need to run our business as well!
February 11th, 2008 at 8:39 am
Gee, no mention that the Discussion Forums are down?
February 11th, 2008 at 8:44 am
Heh heh…that’s funny…I just noticed that one of my notification emails (from Joomla) took 8 hours to be delivered and I was thinking about opening a support ticket. But it sounds like they’re already on top of it!
February 11th, 2008 at 8:53 am
My IMAP is no longer working. I wonder if this is related.
February 11th, 2008 at 8:54 am
OH NOES MY CLIENTS ARE SCREAMING MY CLIENTS ARE SCREAMING!!! HOOK HOOK GIVE US THE HOOK
I JUST LOST 20,000 DOLLARS OF REAL AMERICAN MONEY
JOSH JONES I AM COMING FOR YOUR SLANTY-EYED VAGINA
February 11th, 2008 at 9:12 am
I just wrote a script for one of my apps which will dump all the messages sent via PHP into database so I’ll still have immediate access to them, if I want to.
Still I’m hoping this will be resolved soon.
February 11th, 2008 at 9:57 am
Yeah, I see that the mailq on bonk is getting filled up since the SMTP server on smarty doesn’t seem to be running.
February 11th, 2008 at 10:01 am
Dear Sirs!
Good Luck to solve this problem .. i think you ll need.
My emails are delayed up to 72 hours - Its crazy.
My customer post an order and receive the confirmation 3 days later .. ahahahaha CRAZYYY !!!
Good Luck Boys!
February 11th, 2008 at 11:03 am
I’m getting really fed up with you guys…
February 11th, 2008 at 11:20 am
This is taking too long to sort out, I’m not very happy at all and am thinking on closing my account. Please prove me wrong and make me happy again.
February 11th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Seems webmail isn’t working either… so much for getting work done today, now I get to spend my afternoon answering the phone.
February 11th, 2008 at 11:32 am
This is the worst bungle I have yet to experience. This has cost my small company a significant amount of money and what is worse loss of goodwill. I have irate customers emailing me. We are spending the entire day manually emailing people their product numbers and activation codes and trying to explain what is going on.
We have decided to close our account and move to a different host. Dreamhost has handled this whole move in a very amateur way. I am starting to think that dreamhost is actually situated in someone basement.
February 11th, 2008 at 11:45 am
Well, that explains, I suppose, why I haven’t gotten new account activation emails for my forum since the downtime this weekend.
At least I hope that’s the explanation…
February 11th, 2008 at 11:49 am
The only thing that could cost your sad little company money is your incompetence, since that’s the only reason someone would let their income rely 100% on a single shared hosting account.
As they should. Their business means so little to you that you had no plan B.
Poor baby has to work?
No you won’t. There are those that say it and those that just do it.
Trouble reading? Who said anything about a move? This is about trouble with server.
That’s because you’re not very bright. They are one of the largest web hosts in the world.
You, on the other hand, probably are running your make-believe business from your mommy’s basement.
February 11th, 2008 at 11:51 am
For me, this has been going on since around mid-day on Saturday (2-9). It’s been this way over 48 hours now. I don’t expect perfection but I’m not satisfied with the performance level I’ve seen in the 3 months I’ve been with DH. If there isn’t a noticeable improvement in stability levels soon, I”ll be forced to move elsewhere.
It’s really a shame because the feature-set DH offers is appealing but without performance and stability, it’s means little.
February 11th, 2008 at 11:54 am
Wow. First they couldn’t submit the form to send their data. Now they can submit the form and the info just sits there.
Very sad. 2x in 4 days these guys have screwed me.
February 11th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Dear Reality Check,
Sounds like you feel we should just send them checks and not expect anything at all in return. As though if you get 50% uptime our attitude should be ‘hey, it’s shared hosting. what do you expect! you should be glad your web sites are EVER up, you cheap bastard.” I don’t see any disclaimer on Dreamhost saying “Sign up for the cheap shared hosting! Sure, it’ll be down more than it’s up, and don’t expect much support.”
I’m tired of people like you using the “what do you expect, it’s shared hosting” argument.
February 11th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
What mail servers were involved in this problem?
February 11th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Well, I kind of know I can’t rely on a cheap hosting, so although it’s a bit of an inconvenience I will live. What I find annoying is that it took nearly 20 hours (I emailed them about this) for the critical announcement to show up. At least keep us in the loop. I was wasting time thinking what had I changed a setting or something (as I had just moved over a database).
Also, this has been a good lesson for me to get 2 hosts, so I can swap between the two.
February 11th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
I don’t like downtime any more than the next person, but the Reality Check dude has got it 100% right.
Stuff breaks.
February 11th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Guys, seriously, this is not a business-ready web hosting company.
February 11th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Diego is right. You guys expect way to much out of a host who does all they can, as well as it’s not a business type server. Shared hosting is just that. If you want to do a business type deal, then USE A DEDICATED SERVER! Or better yet, BUY YOUR OWN DAMN SERVER! This isn’t a business set-up. Even though it does have scripts for e-commerence, it doesn’t mean that it can be used. Now get over it and quit complaining. If you are losing money over this, then go buy a server.
Sounding like a bunch of babies over this isn’t going to solve the problem.
February 11th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
This is not a medium severity issue. It’s much more urgent.
February 11th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
How can their be just one server screwing this up, can you switch the load to a different server to ensure that email sent now is at least processed as the other one catches up?
February 11th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
SMTP is down for me now… On server spunky
February 11th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
That is why we are leaving dreamhost. Sad individuals like reality check can crawl back to what swamp they come from. You are a pathetic individual. Dream host screwed up big time and everyone knows it - fan-bum-boys like reality check can say what they like but that still doesn’t excuse the poor performance by dreamhost. Have fun everyone.
February 11th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
SMTP also down here…. yay.
February 11th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
It seems like you guys let us deal with your problems a little too much.
I don’t know enough about it to really say for sure, but couldn’t you beef up on redundancy and get things that break working in the background more?
It seems like it’s really frequent that I can’t access my ftp or my mail or my this or that.
I’m not quitting this thing yet, but honestly it feels like it’s been getting consistently worse over the past few years and if you keep it up I really won’t feel good about giving you my money even though it IS so cheap.
Anyway, good luck.
February 11th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Well, at least I appreciate the more conciliatory tone of the outage emails lately - a little more humble and less cocky. That goes a long way in making me feel better about the job you’re doing.
February 11th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
So I went to the main dreamhost site… Nothing about “Not business ready”. Nothing about “not reliable”. And when I check Dedicated Hosting the first paragraph states: “”Dedicated, Shmedicated” Hosting
Let’s get one thing straight. Shared hosting is our bread and butter. It’s what we’re good at. We’re pros. The cream of the crop. The best in the biz. The coup d’état. Or something.”
To be honest, if it wasn’t for someone botching the PHP form submission last week (which never made the dreamhost status page but sure should have) I’d have let this go too. I’ve been VERY patient with many of the other problems over the years. Having my site down for going on 5 days now has a tendency frustrate me. (no forms and no email = no site)
To say “Even though it does have scripts for e-commerence, it doesn’t mean that it can be used”… well, just repeat that to yourself a few times it should sink in.
February 11th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
If you want Porsche service and Porsche performance and Porsche prices, BUY A PORSCHE … otherwise, deal. It’s like when you buy a VW … you KNOW it’s going to break for no reason or the radio will stop working or the windows will stop going up and down, but you buy it cause it looks pretty cool, gets pretty good gas mileage, lasts a long time, and is a pretty fair price!!!
Do you think they are not doing their best?! If you say they are not or they are idiots, I am SURE DH would prefer you LEAVE jacknuts.
February 11th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Anyone else getting this message “450 Server configuration problem”?
February 11th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
If I buy a fork I expect it to work as a fork. If it doesn’t work I don’t expect people to say, you can’t expect this work to pick up meat its only good for peas. If I pay for a server then I expect it to work, this week has been very annoying.
February 11th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Yep, I’ve just started getting the “450 Server configuration problem” error when sending emails. I’m guessing the mail server is so full because of the previous downtime it’s rejecting new messages.
February 11th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
SMTP on looney just went down a little while ago. I just put in a support ticket.
February 11th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
I’m getting 450 Server Configuration Problem on the main postal.mail.dreamhost.com right now…
awesome going! this affects everyone, right?
ray
February 11th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
I would hate to be customers of many of your businesses. “Oh it broke….just duct tape it and it will be fine..I guess it’s my fault, but I only sorta care, if you don’t like the service go somewhere else.”
I moved to to DH because my friend who I trust recommended them. I knew nothing about them, but I was frustrated from my previous hosting company that he also recommended (I had no issues with them for many years). Now I am regretting this move, but I hate to move yet again.
Just let me send emails and keep my site up. That’s all I ask. Maybe that is too much to ask on this forum.
February 11th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
450 Server configuration problem
Sending using SMTP, frisky
February 11th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
I’m getting the “450″ as well…c’mon Dreamhost - let’s get rockin’!
Need to send stuff here sooner than later…
February 11th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
I just put in a support ticket… Let’s see who accidently rm’d the conf file, huh? I think a witch hunt is in order.
February 11th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
OMG fix it please!
February 11th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Is this also respsonsible for the 505 errors I’m getting? Since around 420, I’m unable to send email on any of my accounts (I just get “450 Server configuration problem”).
February 11th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
I think they fixed it…
February 11th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
damn. it’s gone from lame to just plain wack. i hate using gmail, getting my data mined. but screw DH for not keeping us informed. I understand things break, but can’t they at least tell me what’s up?
bad client skillz
February 11th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
@Confused: To say “Even though it does have scripts for e-commerence, it doesn’t mean that it can be used”… well, just repeat that to yourself a few times it should sink in.
Already did. And then I came up with this. Buy a server and configure it. But then again, I am talking to a bunch of children who shouldn’t even be on the net simply because they don’t know how to work a computer.
So grow up and move on or suffer.
February 11th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
I like the idea of people banding together and sharing profits, rather than some soulless corporation. However, I also expect to be able to run a business. When I signed a two-year contract, I didn’t see any kind of disclaimer to warn me that I would be stuck with a webmail client with no HTML support, the inability to fully utilize Mailman’s management functionality, and worst of all - frequent loss of email capability.
I switched to this ISP because my previous one provided poor service, and a friend recommended this one. That friend’s word is now worth very little. Cheap is great, but I need dependability. That’s why I will pay more for a Toyota - because I don’t want to be stuck in a cold parking lot wishing I had transportation. I would love to stay with dreamhost because it’s a PITA to be switching around all the time - however I’m going to switch when my contract is up - and it will be with folks who guarantee service.
For the abusive folks on this discussion who think that this kind of service should be expected and think we’re just whiners - grow up and take a shower. You’re amateurs, and have no business telling people who are trying to use Dreamhost for commercial purposes what to think. If Dreamhost really doesn’t want to provide commercial-quality services, then they should say so. They should just say “Cheap but undependable”, and let the nintendo-nerds and school-boys subscribe to their services.
February 11th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
To all the fucktards complaining… are you aware that you can use ANOTHER SMTP SERVER ? for example, the one provided by your ISP.
February 11th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
I’d ask you to repeat the sentence a couple more times. Not sure it will help, but I’m hoping the light bulb will go off for ya.
If we cannot voice our concerns, frustrations, suggestions, etc, why would they have provided the ability to comment on status issues.
I configure enough servers in my day job, thank you.
Grow up? Really? That’s what you’re coming back with?
February 11th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
I’m in a hotel, and my ISP doesn’t allow itself to be used as a relay. Damn school-boy.
February 11th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
this sealed the deal…. No renewal for you…
February 11th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Working for me now. Back to work!
February 11th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Not getting responses to support tickets for unacceptable amounts of time is bad enough, but the fact that you cannot discuss those problems on the company’s own forum without being subjected to unwarranted personal attacks by a handful of predatory wife-beaters who spend hours trolling this status blog looking for people to attack is a deciding factor for me. This company truly has no clue how to value and protect their most important assets - their customers. If I treated my clients the way Dreamhost treats theirs, I’d expect them to sack me, because I’d deserve it. I’m off to Techark.
February 11th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Is SMTP a clustered service there? It’s hard to believe one server would be responsible for all this. As others have pointed out though, it is shared hosting and you get what you pay for. Good luck, DH dudes. I’m sure you’ll get it figured out soon.
February 11th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
It appears to be fixed (2:15 p.m. PT).
Question - Do we need to resend every email that came back as undelivered even though it appears in our sent box? Thanks.
February 11th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Good one Gene. You say wife-beater - I say school-boy. I think that both imply immaturity and a inability to grasp the concept of production-quality service.
February 11th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Do we still have no idea how long things will be down?
thank you
February 11th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Kellyone,
Please try it again - my email seems to be working now.
Dean
February 11th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Dean,
Thank you! I had just checked it prior to posting.
What timing!
Thanx again!
February 11th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
You all stop spamming and sending out mass mails and respect the rest is all I can say, it’s not DH’s fault, it’s all the whiners on here fault! So stop complaining like little babies and respect it all, I request that DH remove all from queue and let’s start fresh today! EVERYONE: Suggest that all queued mails be deleted so everything is up to date starting new!!!
If you whine bitch and moan, what’s that going to get you? Nothing, just suggest the proper thing here!
February 11th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
I have a business, yes yes, just like Marc… and I have a shared account, but I also have a backup gmail address for times when email might go down.
Oh wait, here comes the argument that clients may think an email coming from gmail is unprofessional. Well, for the clients I had to contact today I quickly let them know that my email server was on the fritz and I was using gmail for today and possibly tomorrow. Is that so bad? Well thankfully clients and customers DO understand that things break.
It sounds pretty morbid… but there’s a part of me that looks forward to things breaking so I can come here and have some lunchtime comedy relief by reading the irate comments. You know the typical…
“I lost a billion trillion dollars today from my business and my bank is going to foreclose on our farm, oh god, dreamhost what have you done!!!! i’m leaving and going to another host where i will never have any outages on shared hosting because they rule and you don’t. i hope you survive without my business! I’m Important!!”
Yep, that’s basically how they go and I spit up coffee on the keyboard.
Why am I not freaking out because one my sites (that pays my rent) has email down? Well because I have shared hosting and I’m living that lifestyle. If I was really pulling in the dough I’d get dedicated, but ya know, I’d still have a backup plan (hello gmail ol pal). Know why? Because nothing is 100%.
xoxoxo
February 11th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
I’m screwed (again) too. AAAAIIIEEEE.
February 11th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
already 2 whole days with this delay… now, for the last hour mail just won’t go out just bounces back with a 540 error.
and just when I was working in a script for recovering data via mail… ¿maybe I cuased all this fuzz? wish I could… ¿how can they have this problem if there’s no way that you can send more than 20 mails per hour?(or what ever the ridiculous number was)
clients screaming… is it to hard to set up a server whith a back up for the e-mail sever? i’ve been thinking about it for a while…
I don’t care if DH has to dump every mail in the list… but fix this problem NOW
February 11th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
@Otis:
THANK GOD! There ARE smart people around. And I do agree. Watching people state what they do is kind of humorous and good comedy relief.
I like you now
@Agustin: Use another low-level e-mail, and just inform your clients what’s going on. They don’t really care as long as they know. That’s what some of us would do.
February 11th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
otis is right… even yahoo or hotmail go under (not as frecuently), but things get broken and everybody knows it… and I also always warn my clients…
“My Hosting is cheap, but it fails a couple of days each year… if you want better we can arrange that for a fee” They always choose cheap and unreliable (like everyone here)
By the way, DH guys are awesome, I admire them, making this thing work as cheap as it is and without adds and with good overall performance, and they also are nice in the support tickets, even if you are asking for something stupid. Best 120 bucks spent ever. Even better if they are making good money out of this, ‘cos I still am.
I used to have a hosting with human support behind it (by phone) and it was worse, the sayd the same excuses as DH does, but they charged me several times more… and the service wasn’t that good eather. And also I can always come here to rant with you guys… hehehehe
February 11th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
I use Dreamhost mostly for the sake of having a Unix shell account. As of yesterday, I can’t get into my mailbox from the shell.
Specifically, when I start Pine, I see “Executing initial-keystroke-list……” and [Sorting "INBOX"], and the status bar at the top says: Folder: (CLOSED). Those messages remain on screen indefinitely; there’s no timeout or error message.
Webmail continues to work OK, but Webmail isn’t how I do my mail!
I’ve got a support request in, but meanwhile, can anyone speculate on the source of the problem?
February 11th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
that’s what I did… Used yahoo… (by the way… too bad MS didn’t buy yahoo, it would have been intresting too see something like that)
When clients call me to kick my ass I just rant against something I’m shure they won’t understand… like… “I know there’s a problem with the mail, This dammned ISP comlink protocol is making me nuts…”, and so on and son on untill they feel compassionate and excuse themselves for bugging me…
February 11th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
mail is going out now… but it hasn’t arrive still…
oh well, not much to do but bost here
February 11th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
@Dean,
Don’t crucify your friend too much, Dreamhost used be much better than they are now. I mainly use DH for personal reasons so the downtime is no biggie for me, however if I was needing business grade hosting I would have looked elsewhere.
February 11th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
All that is really really not serious, com’on make things work. I am a beginner free lancer and I am loosing my only one client !
February 11th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
I’m an artist still in the infancy stages of my business. This is what I know:
1. I’m not going to call anybody any names - despite the fact that I have strong opinions on this matter.
2. As much as I’d love to have my own dedicated server, I can’t afford to even take a class at my local CC + costs of equipment in order to create one. DH Dedicated servers are also too expensive. Surely DH realizes that the vast majority of businesses can’t afford such luxuries. Surely DH realizes who/what their client base consists of (that’s simple marketing).
3. I’ve had two hosts before DH. The first (which literally was a basement business) was bought out by the second. They cost half as much ($4.95/month). In three years of service I only had one instance of emergency down time and two instances of e-mail troubles. The down time was caused by an electrical storm that affected both his house and his offsite backup in the same town. As a result, HE purchased upgraded equipment and added another server and layer of protection. Notice I said that HE furnished a backup plan, not his clients. This one man operation did it right. When I had e-mail issues I requested a service ticket and the problem was solved within two hours on both occasions. In all cases the troubles were followed by apologies sent directly to my e-mail.
4. I expect more problems from larger hosting companies like DH. But because they’re larger I also expect more ability to support and fix those problems.
5. A part of what I do is web design. I am often asked to recommend hosting services. I would like to believe that DH would appreciate my positive word-of-mouth advertising. As it stands I cannot recommend DH. Because of this e-mail issue I am going to tell future clients to stay away from DH. I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. If my opinion doesn’t matter to DH, I’ll move to a different company as well.
6. For those of you who are suggesting we upgrade our servers, please note that DH clients who have dedicated servers still have mail and databases on shared servers (reference http://www.dreamhost.com/hosting-dedicated.html — look under “Cons”). Whether we’re spending $6 or $400 a month we’re all losing business. That should matter to DH because they rely on us for their food as well.
These are my questions:
Who are these people standing up for DH?
I’m for giving people credit where credit is due, but who buys hosting services with the expectation of having many hours of downtime every month?
Who purchases web space and then doesn’t put a business on it? Even sites like wikipedia and myspace (whose main users don’t pay a dime) makes money and can only make money through constant and consistent service. When their sites are down or don’t work, people get pissed and they lose money through loss of interested advertisers. As a result, Tom et al get pissed. Why should I be made to believe that I shouldn’t be pissed?
Why are people putting money, time and trust into sites and then be indifferent as to whether or not the site is usable?
Why aren’t these people sharing their obvious excess of funds with others who will actually put it towards a worthwhile cause?
If we must have down time, why isn’t it happening at off-peak hours as preventative maintenance on a regular basis? Obviously not every emergency can be prevented, but I’ve only seen one case of preventative maintenance happening (02/05) and many more cases of unexpected problems resulting in down time. That ratio may not be an accurate portrait of how DH works, but that’s all I see - and perceptions are more important than reality.
Most of my e-mailing worked flawlessly today. My opinion is based on the fact that I couldn’t get one small bid out today - a bid that I lost. Probably doesn’t seem like much of a reason to complain, but when you rely on bids like these to pay rent, it matters.
For those of you who care or think it’s relevant, I switched to DH on 01/01/08 because I started utilizing online streaming video and DH’s space was a better value on paper. But if I can’t access my pre-paid space I’m wasting money and will look for a hosting service that can at least provide enough maintenance to update their copyright to 2008.
To DH (in the small chance that they read these): Problems suck. Good luck fixing it. But understand that if things don’t change I am one more client who will be leaving you behind in a bitter wake. I have three years worth of confidence that I can find a more reliable service for equal or less cost, even if that means sacrificing 400GB of space. Please start taking our sites more seriously. Our income, however foolishly hosted, is the source of your income. The better we can do, the more we can afford to pay you.
February 11th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
For the folks who say, “Just email your clients with gmail and let them know what’s going on” - what about the potential clients that I don’t know about? What about the folks who check out my website and try to email me for more information - and their email bounces?
And who are these folks apologizing for DreamHost (and why)? I wonder if they’re not DreamHost employees doing it. If so, it’s a bad sign that they would prefer to belittle their clients rather than accept the input and improve the quality of their product. If it isn’t Dreamhost staff writing these apologist notes, then it would be nice if they would jump in and say, “Our clients have a right to expect good service, and we will try to improve it.” - and not tolerate profanity-ridden rants.
As for the suggestion to look for business-grade hosting - I would love to know who that would be. This is not a sarcastic remark either - I would really like to know. I would pay more for such service, if they would deliver - but I’m not going to pay for a dedicated server.
Finally, I honestly admire the concept of employee-owned businesses. I would love to see Dreamhost kick everybody else’s butt, however they won’t unless they get serious about quality. If they don’t have any staff who have experience with high-availability solutions and high-quality services, then maybe they should recruit somebody to look over their architecture and QA practices, and make the jump to being commercial quality. If they had cheap AND quality to offer, they would rule the world.
February 11th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
I use DH for my personal websites, and I’m perfectly satisfied. I’m happy to put up with some glitches and downtimes, given the yearly price I pay and all the storage space and features I get. It’s a reasonable compromise.
For my business, I would not be satisfied with the level of service provided by DH, but I’d also be surprised if any other company can provide the level of service a business would expect and charge as little as DH. For my business we pay $2k+ per month, and we have servers in a Tier 1 colo facility (Equinix). That price is worth it — it’s my business, and we do indeed lose money if we’re down.
February 11th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
I’m going to sleep not, better hope DH has fixed this when I wake up.
February 11th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
not=>now
February 11th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
DH staff doesen’t even read this posts… this is just a placebo!
this is absurdely cheap for what you get(even with the down time). I sill haven’t heard or found a hosting service that doesent crash. If any of you knows about it, please let us know… Still like here thow
February 11th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Big news today: Blackberry is suffering an outage across all wireless carriers. Even corporations have downtime.
Don’t forget…Mercury is retrograde!
February 11th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
General venting:
All my domains were DOWN on January 26.
All my domains were DOWN AGAIN on February 4.
Your cheery explanation was that “a user on the server was getting carried away with using up more resources than
they should have been. We have warning scripts that let us know when this is happening and occasionally kill off processes if they are too out of control. Apparently this user was using so many that the scripts had no time to do their thing.”
Now, the servers have significant mail delays. And you know, this is a running issue with you guys. Always with the “ooops sorry we lost a cluster, working on it now” and the “it’s slow for some reason, trying to figure it out, sorry”. It’s constant for years now. I dealt with it until this year because 1) I didn’t have an online business I was trying to get off the ground and 2) I wasn’t getting married. My domains until now were just for personal fun.
Now, I need two of my domains and email associated up with regularity. I understand maintenance. I understand emergencies. But jeebus crickets, people, the frequency with which DH suffers emergencies is staggering.
Dreamhost is *this close* to being fired by me. I’m only waffling because I don’t want the downtime associated with moving domains to a new provider if I can help it. But damn… the day’s coming. I’d say get your act together but I no longer trust that will ever happen. When I feel compelled to make backups of all my mail, websites, galleries and wordpress files *every time* you guys have an outage, planned or not, because I no longer TRUST that everything will come through intact after said outage or maintenance, something is WRONG with your company.
February 11th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Los emails me llegan con dos días de retraso!
February 11th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
@Agustin
Dedi baby, get yourself a dedi
February 11th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Dedi ? ¿like in dedi.com or somethin? ¿good hosting?
February 11th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Mail seems to be getting through OK, but my client just got about 10 copies of the same email (inc. 5Mb attachment).
February 11th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
I’m amazed at just how many people were (are) having troubles. I’ve got to say that even being on spunky, I don’t appear to be having anywhere near as much trouble as most of you guys.
Could it be that I don’t do as much? Maybe. Could it be that I “Keep It Simple”. Probably. Do I use monitors to tell me what’s going on. Sure do. Do I have alternatives. You bet your ass.
@Agustin - He’s saying that you should buy yourself dedicated hosting. DH offers dedicated hosting, but so do many other places. Everywhere has issues from time to time, self hosted or otherwise. It’s just that DH is dumb enough to let its customers talk in front of everyone about it.
Note - Remember there are hundreds of thousands of domains hosted at DH. Low Medium and High are simply not granular enough for everyone’s issue to be “high” even though it might be for them.
February 11th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
Jesus! fix this please, we got an game develop company, and without the emails contact, we are “dead”
Regards
February 11th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
EVERYONE vote here for them to fix this if you have Suggestion credits:
https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=home.sugg
February 11th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Dedi right here for $69/mo at theplanet.com with no panel, just rpm -Uvh webmin if you are a panel person
Get you a cheap ole Celeron and use it for just mailing, only suggest this if you can afford it 
Then you set your mail server mx and all records related to your mailing there!
February 11th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
You think that because you’re a moron.
Do you really think you deserve the same uptime as someone dumping thousands per month for multiple servers in multiple datacenters, with complete redundancy… all for a few dollars a month?
If you can’t afford it, you aren’t hosting anything that important anyway.
Love it when dummies pull random numbers out of their asses and try to pass them off as stats.
People buy dedicated servers for a reason–you just don’t get it.
Of course you are. It must be awful for you to constantly be reminded that you’re wrong and don’t know what you’re talking about.
You’re not leaving Dreamhost and you know it.
So you can’t tell the difference between a metal fork and a plastic fork? How about the price tags? How can you charge more for a metal fork when it does the same thing as a plastic one. Waaaa life isn’t fair!
February 11th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
While I am new, Dreamhost has been nothing but cordial and helpful and as far as I have seen this problem is not affecting me since I just sent a test message from a gmail account to my email account on my hosting plan and it arrived almost immediately.
February 11th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
While your head’s definitely in the right place, you’re actually paying more and doing more work than you need to.
There are plenty of companies that specialize in email hosting, offer full redundancy and don’t charge much at all (fastmail, tuffmail & many others.
The reliability is nice, but what’s really nice is just having your mail separate from your hosting. Especially if you’re using a failover service, need to move hosts, etc…….
We’re just over 12 years old and don’t cry non-stop. Some might be 12 or younger, but are smart enough to understand how hosting works.
Wow, you’re so smart. Using your own lack of logic, maybe you can tell us which competitors are doing all the whining here? Or did you think stupid theories only made sense if they worked out in your favor?
If you would pay more, then why did you choose to pay less and sit around complaining instead?
You don’t have to pay for a dedicated server, but you also aren’t going to get dedicated server reliability on a shared host. With any shared host, you are at the mercy of every other user on that machine.
Have you been napping for the last several years? Dreamhost already does. There are millions of hosts out there. Dreamhost is the 11th biggest in the US and the 14th largest in the world.
Over 650,000 domains and growing. The whiners are such a meaningless minority, that they are far from an indication of Dreamhost’s success & percentage of happy customers.
There are idiots here that think when one server has a problem, that everyone on all 1500 servers hates Dreamhost. That’s not how it works.
Dreamhost is that big because that’s where people want to be. No one has a gun to their head.
Uh… most people. Ever hear of blogs? How about photo galleries? Maybe forum rings a bell?
Because Tom spent a fortune to make that fortune. You spend the cost of one meal per month.
There is no downtime if you know what you’re doing. People just like to cry about how they’re leaving, even though they have absolutely no intentions of doing so, so they throw out lame excuses.
February 11th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
You can’t use Gmail to send a daily email to over 1,000 recipients!! Help DreamHost, Help!! We’re being inundated with customer complaints!!!!
February 11th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Jeez. If you need THAT kind of reliability for email [1000s+ recipients]… then…
Pay. More.
Sheesh.
Or, like, split your address book groups? Hello? Sheesh.
If you’re not going to be smart, then pay the dumb tax to some service that will wipe your butt. It seems a lot of you WANT this but are not willing to PAY for it.
Me? I switched to DH because I got tired of ‘negotiating’ with someone in bangalore [my last hosted service, ADDR]. They couldn’t fix ANYTHING and never admited to ANYTHING.
And yet, here’s DH blogging and working on the problem. Go figure.
February 11th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
Please upgrade this to high severity. We rely on mail for:
1) PayPal IDN integration
2) Automated Software delivery at point of purchase.
Thank you.
February 11th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
I have just realised that I have been a prick to everyone here. I am such a dreamhost fan boy that I forgot how far my mouse is stuck up my arse.
February 11th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
ah reality must of set in Reality Check
It’s still true, everyone who relies on dreamhost for their business, really needs to re-access and think about VS or dedicated at least for some of your requirements. You in some cases only have to pay a little more than double the amount in some cases.
I know I will be looking at in, once my business takes off.
Still, I don’t think there’s any excuse for not keeping people up-to date. That’s what annoys me and has made me begin to look at other hosts to share the load
February 12th, 2008 at 12:27 am
I’m getting my web form emails delayed by only 14 hours now… big improvement.
February 12th, 2008 at 1:05 am
Pretending to be me is as close as you’ll ever come to being smart. Good thing you’re already pathetic, or doing that might have tarnished your image.
Be sure to print this page out and take it in for show and tell tomorrow, so the other 5th graders can see how clever you are.
February 12th, 2008 at 1:10 am
No I am just arguing with myself. Who is impersonating me? I don’t like it.
February 12th, 2008 at 2:05 am
Things break down its understandable, but this page should have been updated as soon as the problem appeared. I thought my code had broken down, spent too much time before I finally figured out the problem was not on my end.
February 12th, 2008 at 3:41 am
Yeah all of you who are crying about your email being down and it costing your business thousands of $$$… WORK IT OUT!… if you need 99.99999% up-time then pay for it you cheap-arses! Stop expecting an expensive service for $10 a month… if this IS you business then i should have been your number one priority and you should have taken appropriate measures to ensure that it will have 99.9999% up-time!… n00bs…
February 12th, 2008 at 3:47 am
Hi Everybody!
February 12th, 2008 at 3:49 am
I read on the top of the frontpage of this site :
If you are experiencing a problem not reported here, check our web panel for more information.
(Please remember, posting in the comments here IS NOT an official way to contact DreamHost.)
The problem is right now I can’t access my sites nor https://panel.dreamhost.com/index.cgi?tree=support.msg&
heh…. What’s going on?
February 12th, 2008 at 4:28 am
I like wanking willies and dicks.
February 12th, 2008 at 4:54 am
http://fuckdreamhost.com - ’nuff said!
February 12th, 2008 at 5:16 am
@Larry -
If the panel’s not working for you (try clearing cookies, it helps), you can contact DH staff using this link - http://www.dreamhost.com/contact.cgi
@RighteousIndignation -
You’re about two years late sharing that link, Crap. Wrong link. You win!
February 12th, 2008 at 6:36 am
Cutting through the sometimes childish responses or senses of entitlement at each extreme end of the spectrum (ie. those who want world class 100% reliable service for 6 bucks a month, and those who say everyone should put up with problems that seem to be increasing in regularity just because we only pay 6 bucks a month) … I would just like DH to fix the problem. It has been several days now, and although my email delay has now dropped from 30+ hours to about 18 its still a bit of a pain.
I dont use my site for a fully fledged business so am not losing ‘000s of dollars a day by not having email, but my site is a business in a sense. It is a community with forums and other features and my users generate me a little bit of income from google ads embedded into them.
With no access to email, my users cant send me email to the site (although I have provided an alternative gmail address so thats not a biggie. However, new users cant receive activation emails, and those users who forget their passwords cant get a new one ….. and that is a problem.
I dont really care about the few dollars a day earned from Google, its inconsequential, but after being with DH for a little bit over two years, it would seem that different problems are coming with ever increasing regularity and that IS damaging my website community. I can put up with, and even expect, the odd outage, the odd bit of slowness etc as DH normally have it fixed reasonably quickly … but when problems last several days or we get several over the course of a week or a month then it may be time to re-evaluate.
February 12th, 2008 at 6:48 am
customers hosting OWNED……….very thanks dreamhost !
one day ok……but two day………maybe tree……..maybe fore
February 12th, 2008 at 6:54 am
After about six months of development, I’m finally ready to launch my site. However, that was on Sunday. The day I wanted to finally open the doors and hopefully have new members come storming in. I was told that within 24 hours the problem would be fixed, if not sooner and it’s still broken (or slow).
However - I just sent an email using my new contact form I programmed and I received an email within 11 minutes! That’s a lot better (still slow, though better) than my 6 hour delay yesterday, and 18 hours or so delay the day before. Crossing my fingers here - I hope I can finally launch my site this afternoon.
I’ve been with DreamHost for 5 years and have hosted many sites with them. However, I’ve always understood that they are not the absolute best, though for the money, they are pretty good. If I owned a company that was making more than $20 bucks a day, I would move my site to a more stable platform, such as a dedicated server. I read a comment that someone lost $20,000 dollars over the last few days. If that’s really true, you’re really stupid.
I just wanted to post that.
February 12th, 2008 at 7:53 am
and the comments continue to just get more entertaining. the majority are filled with the normal amount of whining and thankfully there are those who are still sane here.
to the gentleman who wrote regarding new customers trying to write in yesterday. Well, then maybe you should upgrade to Dedicated Hosting or find an alternate backup for email. Every well-run business should have a back-up plan regardless if it is one person or a thousand in the company.
and no, I do not work for Dreamhost, just been a customer since 2002. Before DH, I had 5 providers (dating back to 1996) and ALL of them had downtimes. The difference is, a few other companies I will not mention, would not alert the customers to the downtime nor would they have a status area customers could go to to see downtimes. I want a company that comes clean when they make mistakes and not bullshit me. If DH turned into some StopMomma company I’d be taking that last train to clarksville.
and yes, it is not a picnic when something breaks. i feel it too like everyone else. i host 4 active domains and each one has an audience, and just one is my day job work one. it sucks to have any shread of downtime but i’ll fill you all in on a secret. my cat loves it. yep, she knows it’s playtime. no work, yay, get the string!!! and yesterday i did just that.
xoxoxo
February 12th, 2008 at 8:18 am
PHP mail being sent by my phpbb3 board is coming through within a few mins now…. There are some missing emails from the past few days though.
February 12th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Good work Dream Host in resolving the issue.
I work for a small to medium sized IT company & only know too well on what mail server issues can do & the delays they can cause.
For the whingers, if it matters so much, get dedicated hosting…….
February 12th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Thanks.
February 12th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
I just tested — my last email went through in a second. So it’s working.
February 12th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
problem with delays not resolved, 19:32 ET, 12 Feb 08
problem with “unknown users” not resolved 19:33 ET, 12 Feb 08
problem creating new email addresses in control panel not resolved 19:33 ET, 12 Feb 08
February 12th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
7:48 PM EST
My IMAP still does not work, neither do any of my clients using dreamhost
what is going on?
February 12th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
For all those hit by DH latest mail blunder:
I sincerely recommend hosting your mail elsewhere through a modified MX record. Yes, emails that are suppose to go out through sendmail would still be stuck, but maybe smtp with your mail host would be a better alternative (yes, I know, not always an option). Although this isn’t an option for everyone, we are using Google Apps (google.com/a) and it has been great. Overall, if you a business, I recommend not hosting with DH.
M
February 12th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Crazy, today (13. February) I’m receiving emails dated 9. February !
February 12th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
is anyone going to update this problem? Is there an ETA on getting it fixed????
February 12th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Hahahahaha, i swear it didn’t say resolved a minute ago. Must have been loading from cash. So where’s that damn mail I’ve been waiting for….
February 12th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
That is a LOT of mail.
February 12th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
You are all extremely thick.
You need to see the light like I did and go to a host where things like this and all the other juvenile problems DreamHost has don’t happen.
February 13th, 2008 at 4:40 am
Dude, if you’re going to troll and spam you need to remember to add your affiliate link to the new hosting company. Otherwise your link farms and “SEO Optimization” (you can pronounce this as ‘infected’) sites won’t get credit.
February 13th, 2008 at 9:50 am
@”Former Dreamhoster”: TITS or GTFO !
February 13th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
my site is slow, mail no worky, can’t log on, weird charges… I am so done with these guys… It was fun when I didn’t care about downtime.
February 13th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
$top reports my server has been up for 43 days. I assume it was rebooted for the New Year.
Sure, I’ll have downtime sooner or later (and I expect it) but DH has been fantastic so far.
Unfortunately for those who’ve not encountered it before you won’t know until you go somewhere else to see first hand how everyone, everywhere, has downtime at some stage and that 99% of hosts will NOT tell you the truthful why’s and wherefore’s about any problems before, during, or after they occur. Especially if they’re responsible.
I keep proprietary code at the Savvis Datacenter (they handle alot of Wall Street data). Savvis have one of the most up to date setups in the world.. and as a customer you pay for it! No matter the millions invested even they have mail issues, hardware faults, server reboots, etc. What I like about DH is they’re up front about *everything*. You just can’t buy that kind of transparency from businesses in this day and age.
February 14th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
Hear, hear!
February 17th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Bir Pirikette Sen Koy! Web Site is Down
http://www.piriketseverler.tr.gg
February 22nd, 2008 at 7:47 pm
i really enjoy reading these comments. it really is an awesome laugh.
there is NO perfect host. if you leave you’ll just be complaining about the new one. i’d bet money on it.
my site is probably up 99% of the time. the mysql server has only gone down (that i’ve noticed, which is all that matters, right?) i think twice in over a year… and it was back in 0 time.
in any case if you are worried about something going wrong (especially if you use your site as a method of getting $$$) then it’s your responsibility to have a backup plan of some sort. of course you expect your servers to be up and working. but you also expect your computer to work … or your car. you can’t tell me you don’t have an alternative method of going to work if your car dies. don’t blame dreamhost so … ignorantly. yea, it’s annoying. but they don’t even have to tell you something’s wrong. it’s obvious they know when something’s not working and it’s obvious they’re working on fixing it. leaving rude comments … do nothing. at all. although it does make a humorous read
February 25th, 2008 at 9:17 am
None of our email that is routed through dreamhost is being delivered. Please guys - can you get on top of this and let us know what’s going on? Just had 2 clients call and ask why I haven’t responded. THIS IS EMBARASSING
May 31st, 2008 at 3:42 am
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