[llamabeast]

Thanks Bwaha! Apparently each pound is 1.73 dollars.

Chris - the reason you could still ping it is that the web server is a completely different machine to the LlamaServer itself. There's some explanation in the FAQ I think, although it might be outdated.

Anyway, a system similar to what you describe is already in place. The server won't host for as long as it's unable to check its email.

If contact with the mail server goes down, the website is updated intelligently to explain what's happening and hosting times are postponed. Unfortunately if the LlamaServer itself goes down most of the intelligence is lost, so the website just sits there dumbly pretending things are fine (which is what happened yesterday). Happily, power cuts here are pretty rare.