Ask HN: Should You Publicly Post Uptime Stats for a SaaS site?

timf · on Jan 21, 2009

As a consumer, SaaS sites that post information like this (that I find credible) definitely influence my buying decision (I don't have anything to say to you as a SaaS site owner yet).

Check this site out, it has a lot to say on this subject (and good examples in their 'hall of fame'):

http://www.transparentuptime.com

apinstein · on Jan 21, 2009

Wow, that's a cool site. I didn't find it in my initial research. Thanks!

callmeed · on Jan 21, 2009

I could be wrong, but I'm inclined to think it's only helpful for SaaS apps serving geeks/hackers.

If you're serving Joe Consumer or a specific industry/niche market, I'm not sure it matters.

I do like it when my service providers have a "system status" page, so maybe that's an option.

apinstein · on Jan 21, 2009

I don't think it matters whether the customer is a geek; rather it matters only if the service is "mission-critical" for the customer.

For instance, our apps serve niche business customers (photographers, realtors). We get questions about uptime from only about 1-2% of realtors for the website tool app, but probably 10-20% of photographers. This jives with "only matters when it's infrastructure" as mentioned above. We are the deliverable for the photographers...

callmeed · on Jan 21, 2009

Makes sense. We serve photographers primarily too–and yes, they tend to care about uptime quite a bit.

We don't publish uptime stats, but we do work our butts off to have a good reputation in general. In my experience, photographers rely heavily on the recommendation (good or bad) of other photographers. I'd say don't publish uptime data but give a general outline of your server/data center/reliability/backup procedures and why they're awesome. Treat the customers you have like gold and they'll recommend you in forums, blogs, etc.