Schwab’s web-hosting service fizzles in frantic market

The websites of more than two dozen advisers who use a hosting service from Charles Schwab & Co.’s institutional division were sidelined Tuesday due to a power failure, confounding clients eager to check portfolio values and other information on a day when the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted by more than 500 points.

About 30 of some 300 clients who use Schwab’s Advisor WebCenter were affected, a Schwab spokeswoman said, attributing the outage to “a power issue’’ at CorrectNet, the vendor that provides the hosting service.

She said the outage was “sporadic, lasting for about two hours’’ and had been fully resolved as of Tuesday afternoon.

At least one East Coast advisory firm, however, said its clients received outage messages from about 10:30 a.m. until the market’s close at 4:00 p.m.

“It made for a long day,’’ said the marketing coordinator at the firm, who requested anonymity. “Clients can freak out when they can’t reach their financial adviser’s website.’’

Clients at the firm’s website can check weekly updates to their portfolios and get informational articles. She said the glitch was the first experienced by her firm in the five years they’ve used the service.

Officials at CorrectNet, which is based in Hauppauge, N.Y., declined to elaborate beyond confirming that there was a power outage Tuesday at its data center.

They would not comment on whether other clients besides Schwab were affected.

Even before Tuesday’s breakdown, Schwab Institutional had decided to end the WebCenter service, which it has been providing for a fee to clients.

“Schwab believes that advisers will ultimately benefit by working directly with website hosting providers who specialize in this space,’’ the San Francisco-based company said in an e-mailed statement. “Clients will need to transition to a new service provider, sign a new contract with CorrectNet, or manage the site in-house by February 28, 2009.’’

Schwab said it has “secured favorable pricing and dedicated transition services’’ for its clients with CorrectNet as well as with LightPort of Tampa Bay, Florida, and Advisor Products Inc. of Westbury, N.Y.