Uptime – What's It All About?
When it comes time to choose a web host, there are myriad considerations to be made. You must consider price, storage space, allotted bandwidth per month, website design and much more. However, one of them most important considerations you will make is the amount of uptime offered by the web host. What is uptime all about?
You'll find that most web hosts advertise 99% uptime on an annual basis. That sounds fantastic, doesn't it? However, when you actually consider the remaining .9%, it can add up to quite a bit of downtime over the course of a year.
What is uptime? In a nutshell, uptime is the amount of time each year that the server is functioning normally. Items that can reduce the amount of uptime include server updates, crashes, basic maintenance and more. Why is uptime so important a consideration?
Without the best amount of uptime available, you can end up with a website that is inaccessible to your customers. If a consumer visits your website and it is not accessible, there's a very good chance that they will not return. Modern consumers have neither the time nor the inclination to check back periodically to see if your website is up and running again.
Therefore, server downtime equates to lost profits. The more downtime experienced by the server, the more profit you lose. What amount of annual uptime should you seek? Try to find a web host that offers 99.7% uptime at the very least, though 99.9% uptime is a better option.
