Is Blinksale down (Oct 3, 2008)?

Maybe they're upgrading their web site or server, which is why it is down. If so, they made a mistake by doing it on a Friday morning rather than late on a Saturday evening when fewer people would likely use their site. Having their web site go down is one of the major disadvantages of depending on Software as a Service (SaaS).

Unfortunately I depend on many SaaS companies for my business including Salesforce.com, Google Apps (with Gmail), and Blinksale. I have had pretty good luck until now.

I've been a Blinksale customer since Aug 2007, and have had good service with them. This is the first time that I've noticed that I could not access my account at a time where it is crucial for me.. They've been very prompt about answering my questions and suggestions for feature upgrades...usually in about only one hour.

However now that my business has grown, I cannot afford to be sitting and waiting for their site to come online. I sent an email to support@blinksale.com and have not heard anything back. Unfortunately I also do not have a telephone number to call them and see what is going on.

If this outage continues beyond the weekend, I may need to shop for a new company that can handle my invoicing needs.

Same problem for me. I was already considering switching to Harvest (which tracks time as well as allowing you to send invoices), so maybe this downtime will push me over the edge? Some kind of externally hosted status blog would be helpful.

eppsilon, I agree. Having a separate blog would have been a great way for us customers to know what is going on. It would be an efficient way for us to stay in the loop of whether or not blinksale is undergoing maintenance, a server upgrade, or *gasp* gone out of business.

Do you have a link for Harvest? Or did you mean Orchard (billingorchard.com)?

Same problem for me as well. Luckily, I have email records of my invoices -- I always send myself a copy when I invoice -- but still, having the site unavailable does indeed hammer home that info is vulnerable. Yikes!

Yes, I'm having the same issue. Big wake-up call to the down side of online invoicing. Email copies help but not if you need to send an invoice today. I'm thinking of switching to mac freelance. Anyone used it before?

Hey Everyone — We're terribly sorry about the network outage that took our servers offline for a couple hours today. We're still waiting to hear from our hosting provider what caused the downtime. Blinksale is back up and running again at this point. We're sorry for the inconvenience. We know it sucks.