HealthCare.gov is getting a lot of flack for being inaccessible and just generally bad, so I thought I’d check if Minnesota’s state insurance exchange website is any better. I learned this:

And once the website is up and running, it won’t offer 24/7 service. Instead, it will operate from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday, officials said. There will be no Sunday hours.

MNsure spokesman John Reich said the website’s limited hours won’t be permanent.

“The initial hours are so that we can continually update and improve the user experience and add new features,” he said in an email.

(via TwinCities.com)

I can understand (but don’t agree with the idea of) having some planned downtime when you deploy major new changes (like, maybe an hour), but shutting down every night at 10? That’s especially bad for a website targeted towards people who might be working two jobs and don’t get a chance to visit the site until they get off work late at night. They’re out of luck.

Shameless plug: At Automattic, we continually update and improve the user experience and add new features to products like WordPress.com as often as fifty times per day without making the site unavailable 43% of the time.

(If that sounds good to you, come work with us.)