Uptime Guarantees ‘ Fact or Fiction?
One of the most common things you will see while you are searching for a web hosting company is an uptime guarantee. Many companies advertise a 99.9% Uptime Guarantee, but can they fulfill it? Let’s see what uptime really means and you can really tell if your host is upholding this.
Uptime is necessary for a successful site. If you have a site that is consistently down, you are losing potential visitors and customers. For ecommerce sites, this means that any downtime translates into lost revenue.
How can you tell if your website is really up 24/7? You can’t. There is no humanly possible way to monitor your site by yourself. However, there are several different services that you can employ that will alert you if and when your site goes down.
Before falling for the 99.9% claim, make sure that you read the fine print, if you can find this area on your web hosting company’s site. On some sites there will usually be a disclaimer of some sort that negates this guarantee entirely. There are, however, many companies that really do try to provide this amount of service.
If you are not monitoring your site 24/7, and most people don’t, some hosting companies know that they can skate by on their guarantee. Try to find a host that will actually refund a portion of your monthly fee if the downtime goes over a certain amount of time. This is the type of host that will usually work the hardest to ensure your site stays up.
What kinds of downtime are usually not covered by an uptime guarantee? If you are responsible for taking your own site down, the guarantee will not cover you. For example, if you run a script that crashes the server, you are responsible for the downtime and not the hosting company.
Other areas of downtime that are not included may happen when a host needs to move their facilities, upgrade their servers or upgrade their software. This type of downtime can range from a few minutes to days, depending on the type of move or upgrade. Your host will normally notify you weeks in advance before undertaking this momentous kind of move.
Is it realistic to expect that your site will be up 100% of the time? No, and that’s why you will commonly see the 99.9% instead. However, it’s this tenth of a percent that can be the kicker if you need your site to remain functional.
If you are worried that your host will not live up to their guarantee, it is a good idea to try a site monitoring program. This program will alert you, either by email or an alert on your desktop that your site is indeed down. If you do use this option, make sure that your contact information does not contain an email address for the domain you are monitoring. If you do go down, your mail server will as well, and you will have no idea there is a problem.
Related Posts:Posted on 12/14/05 10:39 PM
Be the first to comment!
Leave a Reply
Search for hosts
SYNDICATION
-
NEW! Blog Feed:
Reviews Feed:
News Feed:
Resources Feed: