The Idea of Uptime Guarantee
| WEB HOST | PRICE | RATING | REVIEWS | VIEW PLANS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| iPage | $1.99/mo | Review | View Plans | |
| Hostgator | $2.75/mo | Review | View Plans | |
| Bluehost | $2.95/mo | Review | View Plans | |
| Godaddy | $3.99/mo | Review | View Plans | |
| FatCow | $4.08/mo | Review | View Plans | |
| Green Geeks | $2.95/mo | Review | View Plans |
Uptime is defined as the time period for which servers keep on working i.e. remain up and running without encountering any issues. This is mostly represented in the form of percentage such as 99.9% uptime will be mostly displayed on the websites of hosting providers. This is a yardstick that depicts the performance of hosting provider in terms of preventing the servers from going down for a specific period of time. High percentage shows that servers are efficiently up and running for a greater period of time translating to your website staying up as per the defined uptime.
The Judgment Call
The inability to verify the uptime offered by a hosting provider is the biggest problem when it comes to judging their performance. You are never clear about the exact amount of time since it is always mentioned as a percentage. Therefore if a hosting provider claims to ensure 99% uptime, you without any argument have to simply accept it.
Establishing an Understanding of uptime
A hosting provider who claims for a 99% uptime outlines being down 1% of the total time. This means that the server will be down for almost 1 hour, 40 minutes & 48 seconds in a particular week. When it is seen on yearly basis, this further means being down for over 3 days, which is quite a long and significant period of time for a business that is totally dependent on online services. This may cause a momentous dip in customer base and revenues.
Comparing Uptime
The uptime percentage appears as somewhat misleading. 99% uptime looks quite appealing but seeing it on a yearly basis reveals the website staying down for at least 3 days during an entire year.
Below mentioned is a comparative analysis of uptime offered by web hosting companies and the respective downtime exhibited on the daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis.
Let’s see what the comparison shows:
| UPTIME | Downtime | |||
| Per day(minutes) | Per Week(hours) | Per month(hours) | Per year(days) | |
| 98% | 28.8 | 3.4 | 14.4 | 7.3 |
| 99% | 14.4 | 1.7 | 7.2 | 3.65 |
| 99.50% | 7.2 | 0.84 | 3.6 | 1.83 |
| 99.90% | 1.44 | 0.17 | 0.72 | 8.8 |
What makes uptime so Important
The importance of uptime is evident from the fact that for a particular business that is totally dependent on online working, they will have to face extensive monetary loss. Whenever the server goes down, the business has to undergo a loss. This process is inevitable.
This means that if your business is making $1000 every month, with a 98% uptime, your profits will drop by $20 on a monthly basis and it would be $240 on a yearly basis. The other side of spectrum is the number of lost sales which will be witnessed because the search engines and customers will regard your website as unreliable and they will stop visiting. This will significantly reduce your monthly revenue.
It is highly recommended to go with a company offering at least 99.5% or above uptime or else this may damage your business in the long run.
