I had a virtual private server with SI for 3 years and then upgraded to a dedicated server in June 2009. I always found their uptime great. I can only remember 1 period of extended downtime and that was a long time ago. I have been pleased with the responsiveness of tech support and the level of expertise is way above average. The only contact I ever had was through the customer portal (Unity) which provides a nice ticketing system.
After upgrading to the dedicated server, my monthly fee was suddenly 50.00 higher and it was due to me going over my quota on backup space. I have still be unable to find how to choose what gets backed up. I do not think it is possible, but I have never truly followed up with a tech to find out. I have paid the extra 50.00 and told myself I needed to see if I could figure it out, but I procrastinated. At least I had a good backup, right?
Well, in June of 2010, my billing did not go through on my credit card. I realized that I did not have the funds and contacted them to set up billing on the 1st of July, when I would receive some extra pay. They were very nice about it (I believe this was my second time in 4 years to have to do this). So they set it up to bill on the 1st of July.
On the 8th of July, my server went dark. I checked to make sure the payment had been made and sure enough, it had never been charged to my credit card. To explain their billing, I cannot initiate a payment. I can only keep my CC info on file and they will execute the payment. So I had no way to "force" the payment. It was their mistake that it was never charged. They admitted to this because of the holiday weekend (July 4th). I called tech support that night and they told me the server was no longer on the network and that it had most likely been reclaimed. I had to wait until the next morning when the billing dept. was available to discuss with them. I called the next morning and spoke with the person I had set up the agreement for billing on the first. This is when she told me that they had just gotten busy and didn't charge me. So on the 8th, they sent through the charge and the funds were not there. So they reclaimed the server, IMMEDIATELY. I was freaking out, but at least I had the backups that I had been paying for, RIGHT?? RIGHT?? NO!!! Part of their reclamation process is to wipe the server AND DELETE ALL BACKUPS.
So after 4 years of hosting with them, they erased every bit (pun intended) of my data in a matter of an hour. Gone. No off-site backups. No data retention. This all within about 20 days of the account going delinquent.
I don't think this is a responsible way for a host to treat customer data. Yes, it is my fault that I did not have the funds on June 21 and then again on July 8. But they agreed to bill me on July 1 when I did have the funds. And they never contacted my after July 1 to tell me they were going to reclaim my account.
SI is a good host, up until you care about your data. The fact that they could wipe away everything in a matter of hours is unconscionable. Deleting backups this soon after an account is delinquent is just not good business practice. I know they don't need to keep customer's data around after that person is no longer a customer, but to not even hold it 30 days is unforgivable.
If you care about your data, back it up off-site of their network. They obviously do not care about your data.