Two Main Factors that Can Result in Website Downtime

You’ve put a lot of work and money into your website. The goal is to pull in as much profit as possible. Unfortunately website downtime can be your biggest enemy when it comes to achieving this goal. For every minute your website is down, your business is losing profits. So what can you do about it? How do you avoid the inevitable? While you can’t completely eliminate website downtime altogether, you can take measures to ensure that any downtime your website experiences is minimal. The following tips will help you understand two of the main causes of website downtime and what you can do to avoid them.

Make Sure You Have Enough Bandwidth

The first thing you need to understand is that all hosting plans are not created equal. If you have purchased a hosting plan that doesn’t offer enough bandwidth to meet your website’s needs, it’s eventually going to result in website downtime. How does bandwidth usage affect website downtime?

Unless you have a hosting plan that allows for unlimited bandwidth, your site is restricted in regards to the amount of bandwidth it can use. Anytime someone visits your website, the person is requesting your hosting company to transfer the webpage from the server to the visitor’s computer. As your host performs this task, the amount of bandwidth being used is calculated and deducted from your allocated amount. As your website traffic increases, so will your bandwidth consumption. If you run out of bandwidth, your website will go down.

Website downtime due to inadequate bandwidth is very common amongst website owners who do not understand their website’s bandwidth needs or how the scripts and graphics on their site affect the bandwidth their website consumes. If you want to maximize your allotted bandwidth, make sure your site is efficient in terms of bandwidth usage. This is especially important for websites that are hosted on a shared server.

To avoid website downtime due to bandwidth issues, try to obtain a hosting plan that includes unlimited bandwidth or consider moving your site to a dedicated server where bandwidth usage will not be an issue.

Make Sure You’re Using the Right Hosting Company

Just as all hosting plans are not created equal, neither are all hosting companies. The fact of the matter is that some hosting companies are better than others. Just because a website says that they offer 99.9 percent uptime does not mean that your site will actually experience it. If you notice your site is going down more often than it should be, it’s time to either upgrade your hosting plan or change hosting companies altogether. The question is, how do you know when your website is suffering from website downtime due to issues with your web host?

The best way to keep an eye on your website downtime is to utilize a website monitoring service. These services will notify you immediately if your website is experiencing an outage. Website monitoring services can also alert you of any performance issues your site may be having, such as slowdowns and other issues that could potentially affect your website’s earnings and its image.

If your website monitoring service informs you that you are receiving less than 99.9 percent website uptime, you need to investigate the issue. It will be time to either upgrade your hosting plan or move your website to a more reliable hosting company. If an incompetent web host is the issue, it will take time and money to move your site. You need to remember that a move to a new host is an investment in your business. When your site experiences less website downtime, you lose less profit. Investing in proper hosting and monitoring of your website downtime are investments that eventually pay for themselves.

The Bottom Line

Website downtime is an issue that every website owner must contend with. Every minute your website is down equates to potential profit being lost. The only way to get an accurate picture of your website’s downtime is to use a website monitoring service. Once a monitoring service is in place you can keep track of your website downtime and you will know when and if you need to invest in a hosting upgrade or take other actions in order to reduce the website downtime your site experiences in order to maximize your website’s profits.