On January 20, 2012, hackers illegally accessed one of DreamHost's database servers and possibly compromised customer passwords; DreamHost immediately told its customers via email to change their passwords.
On January 29, 2012, an accidental Debian auto-update disrupted the services run on several DreamHost servers, causing an outage for customers that lasted for over twelve hours. Debian is one of the most popular Linux distributions used by web host providers as an operating system for their servers. DreamHost tried to keep customers informed about the service outage via the company web site. DreamHost also promised that, in the future, such Debian updates will be tested and run manually instead of via an auto-update.
On January 30, 2012, the Simple OneClick install service offered by DreamHost was taken off-line. Though unrelated to the outage from the day before, this loss of one more function after an extended outage only added to the general feelings among customers that something was wrong with the operations of this web hosting provider.
In all three cases, besides email, DreamHost made extensive use of a Status page on their web site to keep customers informed and up-to-date on the situation. Many customers felt this measure was inadequate and made their feelings known in the Comments section of that Status page.
DreamHost supports over 300,000 customers who make use of live chat and live sales support services in addition to the web hosting services offered by DreamHost. DreamHost's 24x7 support team numbers about sixty, broken down into ten or so teams of six or seven people each. Most support is done by e-mail rather than by phone and the company's web site is considered an important channel for getting information out to DreamHost's customers. However, that level of support may not have been enough. The most common complaint that customers posted was that the Status page on the web site was not being updated often enough.
Based on the customer reaction to these incidents, web host providers in the midst of an outage situation need to be aware of the continuing need of customers to be kept up-to-date on whatever the problem may be. A company should use as many technological channels as neccessary to keep their customers informed, such action being absolutely necessary to keep the loyalty of these long-term customers.
