If you are relatively new to the world of hosting, what do you look for when you’re looking for a company to host your website? The price of the services? The protection they offer? To newcomers, it can be frustrating to find a service that is reliable.
One of the most important features offered by a supplier, besides great security and customer care, is a wonderful thing called an uptime guarantee. Uptime is the amount of time that a server has been online and fully operational and it’s a critical part of maintaining website availability.
Although some providers can claim to uphold a 100% uptime rate, in reality, this is near impossible as routine maintenance and other factors will always cause come kind of interference no matter how minimal it may be. This is the main reason the 99.9% uptime rate is the industry norm and the target to beat for all hosting providers.
So why is the uptime ratio in hosting so important to my business? The simple answer is that the less uptime a provider can offer, the more your website will be offline. This will have a great impact on your business if it’s operated online. For example, If you run an e-commerce store and customers cannot reach your site due to server downtime then you will suffer from losing potential sales.
Let’s break it down; if your provider is offering an uptime rate of only 99%, which in itself is relatively low with industry standards; within the course of a year; the servers will be offline for 87.36 hours which is more than 3 and a half days of your site being non-operational. Compare that to an uptime rate of 99.9%; this equates to a downtime of only 8.76 hours within the year.
To conclude, the next time you are unsure which provider to use, among their other facilities and services, look out for an uptime guarantee.