Don’t Trust Web Hosting ‘Uptimes’
By: John Vinson
When you’ve designed your site and have it working, you’ll then begin the process of shopping around to find a host. There are a wide selection of web servers out there, with many I could recommend. Depending on your situation, certain servers will appeal to your over another.
One aspect, and keyword in the web server business you’ll want to keep an eye on is ‘uptime’. This little term has the potential to be the most important word for your web server. Uptime means the amount of time that a web server is up. Meaning, how often your website will be accessible.
Generally, you’ll see web servers advertise 99% uptime or more. While this seems like a lot, and it is, even 99% can provide a significant amount of downtime. If your server provides 99% uptime in a year, you’ll still have 3.65 days of downtime. If you’re business relies primarily on online sales that can be a big factor.
Even if you’re guranteed a certain amount of uptime, your contract could have certain clauses in it that are tricky. First, many web servers will tell you that their gurantee is for “unscheduled” outages only. So, if your server has many schedule outages then many companies won’t report those. Also, keep and eye out for how outages must be tracked. Many companies will rely on your to track your own outages. This requires software that must always be tracking, and can be quite a hassle.
