Uptime has a very clear definition, the total time in which the server has stayed up and running smoothly. Generally, it is measured in per cent such as 99.9% up value. It is a great source to make you aware of how supportive your web hosting provider is to make the site always up and operational.
Usually, it is a very small tool to measure the actual performance of your web hosting providers. Look at the uptime guarantees while choosing any web hosting agency. Basically, 99.5% uptime is guaranteed to provide by many companies but at the same time, many offers 99.9% uptime too.
Why is uptime important in web hosting and how downtime influences your business?
As we discussed at starting of this article, uptime recognizes the total duration a computer or server is available or down. In technical language, the server needs to stay up for the well being of your business. It plays a significant role in overall business performance. In fact, your business reputation may demise if the site goes down for a longer period of time. But here are a few reasons that describe how downtime will put a negative impact on your organization.
Lose Customer trust:
Building a customer trust on your website is a little tricky thing but this is the only way to gain heavy traffic to your site. There is no alternate of it. A solid and uninterrupted service creates a stronger bond between client and owner. No one takes a step forward to discard your business’s image except the unavailability of your website when it is not being approached by the customers. In the modern era, internet connection is a basic necessity like food and shelter. If your survival is impossible without these commodities the same way business does not exist without a stronger network connection. Whether your site has nothing to do but stay up is more than enough in earning the client’s trust on you. The downtime impacts your brand’s image and loses customers trust. Therefore, the business needs to be 100% online in all spheres.
Impact your search engine rankings:
If your site ever comes across the downtime, directly it impacts on SEO. Google is smart enough to recognize the lower uptime website, so they don’t want to disappoint their searchers and they won’t send them to a website that undergoes downtime. They continuously track your site and will penalise it if frequently they observe it unavailable. A high uptime value or 99.9% up value contributes to making the SEO ranking better.
No profit:
If you are selling products and services online and with downtime your customers aren’t able to purchase anything then it indicates you won’t be able to promote your business at any level and as a result, lose money-no profit will come to your account. Therefore no revenue is being generated by online mode. In e-shop or e-commerce web hosting service, 100% uptime should be there. If it’s not, your revenue will suffer at a greater extent.
Another strategy works here is ‘game of nines’ which means 99.9%. These days, people give more preference to online shopping and if your e-commerce website is down, how will they buy products and attires of their choice? Hence, they move to another site and your business looks like handicapped without revenue.
Wastage of time:
A huge time is wasted when customers are not able to reload the web page again. Communication back and forth with a service provider can consume a lot of time. The provider may take time to overcome the problem and in this, you lose your user. Lost time means you lost the productivity of your agency. In case, your site is not reachable for 2 hours and employees aren’t able to resolve the issue then you’ll lose heavy amount with it. A website that works continuously will save half of your business.
Do you think 99.9% uptime guarantee really works?
Uptime guarantees are not always true in words. A single hosting agreement varies from other agreement. Suppose if any provider is not successful to offer you what they have promised then what will happen? Simply they should refund for a time period when your website is not available.
Here are some misleading uptime guarantees. Let’s discuss them one by one.
Refunding the cost of hosting:
It is very important for each organization. For instance, your website gets $1000 per month on selling services or goods and it undergoes downtime for 4 hours which means you have lost exactly $5.56. If you talk approximately, you’ve to pay around $10-20 per month for hosting packages. So now they have to refund you something between 6 and 12 cents. This will be a good deal.
Unscheduled outages:
You might be confused with word Unscheduled outages, but here is its full explanation, if your hosting provider prior informs you that they will be going to operate server upgrade and site will be down for some particular time lets say, 36 hours, 72 hours or whatever the total duration, then you are not permitted to claim this over the name of uptime guarantee. Maximum time hosts can’t proceed the downtime period for more than 4 hours but there are some moments where the technical fault or new update takes time, so you’re not allowed to kick this in the guarantee plan. These types of complexities are well mentioned in the agreement.
Reporting the outage:
Get refund only when you report providers about an outage. If you have monitored when the server goes down and comes back again, in that situation you are not able to claim for a full outage. And if you have noticed the complete duration when a site goes down then you have the right to get your refund.
How to calculate uptime?
A calculator is used to get the record of uptime and downtime. You can enter the days, hours, minutes and seconds of uptime or downtime and then hit the calculate button and a result will display on a screen.
• 98% uptime is equal to 28.8 minutes/day or 3.4 hours/week or 14.4 hours/month or 7.3 days/year
• 99% uptime is equal to 14.4 minutes/day or 1.7 hours/week or 7.2 hours/month or 3.65 days/year
• 99.5% uptime is equal to 7.2 minutes/day or 0.84 hours/week or 3.6 hours/month or 1.83 days/year
• 99.9% uptime is equal to 1.44 minutes/day or 0.17 hours/week or 0.72 hours/month or 8.8 hours/year
Service level agreement (SLA)
Its an agreement signed between website user and service provider company. And the uptime guarantee is explained under this agreement. According to rules of this deal, if a web host is not eligible to offer you guaranteed up level then you will be qualified to get a refund from the providers. Use the calculator and fill up the recorded time and instantly inform your providers about it.
The uptime calculator is really an admirable tool to let you know exactly how much time your server goes down and force you to lose heavy bucks.
The reality of the uptime guarantee
Higher uptime means higher cost to pay to host providers. In this, you have to choose the middle age uptime where its level gives you some peace of mind without stretching its cost up to the sky.
Attention: If any provider says they will offer 100% uptime, maybe they will but the most probability is they will not. If you talk of realistic fact, there are just a few hosting agencies that are capable to stay your site 100% up but only for a couple of months in the starting rest, they come across a number of technical errors. So, in short, most of them are failed to do what they’re talking of.
Unfortunately, no perfect solution is ever offered by anyone. Because at some point in time, the site may suffer from technical faults and that may end up your professional career.
Pay attention to every single feature, it will help you a lot.
Here are a few things you should consider while choosing any hosting provider company who’s in favour of uptime guarantee:
1. Never trust words and don’t assume your site will not be down ever.
2. Verify a number of providers who say they’ll give uptime guarantee, check out their details and when you think you’re satisfied, sign an agreement.
3. Never go with their decision. Research some other plans and tell them if they agree to offer you the same.
4. Be confident whether you have no idea about this concept(beginner) and take some help from experienced one who is dealing with a good web hosting agency.
5. Monitoring your site on a regular basis to record when it goes down and send the complaint to web hosts.
6. Make sure there is a refund column in agreement. This is because in case if you ever realize the site is doing well you can freely claim them for the revenue.
Consequently, make sure you go through all the parameters while searching for uptime host providers. Because what you see or hear is not always true.
