Disclosure: I have sites hosted on Dreamhost.

Dreamhost had a severe outtage earlier today during peak traffic times, but declared it ‘resolved’ long before all of their sites came online. Comments continued to pour in from disgruntled users well after they made an announcement highlighting (as shown below) that everything was alright. Everything was not alright.

Network Slowness on Dreamhost

Now, I want to like Dreamhost, and most of the time I do. They pride themselves on being friendly and personable, and they are. You get a lot from Dreamhost for under 10 bucks a month. I can even understand the outtage.

That being said, if they are running at “95%” up then I think it’s reasonable to expect that my own sites won’t be 100% down. Also, if the situation is “resolved” then all customers should cease experiencing problems.

Dreamhost is not, as they say, such a nightmare most of the time. However, when nightmarish things happen, I believe their customers have the right to expect them to remain upfront about it. If their systems are mostly operational, then I would rather they spend time fixing the rest rather than updating their message to the equivalent of “mission accomplished.” That is all.