There are a number of companies operating in the world of the Web that offer website monitoring services to online business owners. While most website operators understand the need for a quality website monitoring service, not all online business owners understand why they should pay extra for a third-party service when their web host offers to monitor their websites free of charge. If you’ve left the monitoring of your website up to your hosting provider, there are a few things you need to take into consideration.

You know that the uptime of your website is vital. You have even come to the conclusion that a website monitoring service is a must if you wish to minimize the downtime that your website experiences. What you don’t know is why you should pay for such a service when there are so many companies offering free website monitoring on the web. Before you jump on the “free” service bandwagon, there are some things you need to take into consideration.

In the world of online business, server downtime is an unavoidable evil. Such downtime can wreak havoc on your online business, creating untold amounts of stress as you and your team scramble to do what you can to get the server back up and running as quickly as possible or, if you have no control over the downtime, you jump through hoops of fire to do what you can to mitigate the damage that the downtime is causing. If you think server downtime can be avoided, there are some things you need to take into consideration.

If someone were to ask you what tools you use to fight website downtime, your immediate answer would likely be, “A website monitoring service.” While that answer in and of itself is not a bad one, if a website monitoring service is the only tool in your arsenal against the havoc that website downtime can create for your online business, you are not taking a comprehensive approach to protecting your business from downtime’s effects, nor are you protecting your site’s reputation to the best of your abilities.

Most of today’s savvy online entrepreneurs know that website monitoring service is crucial to the uptime success of a website. After all, every single second of downtime in the ecommerce world equates to profits lost. How much money you lose per minute depends on the volume of sales your online business makes, but any lost profit is too much when it comes to profit loss that could have been avoided in the first place.

No matter what type of website you operate, whether it is a multi-million dollar ecommerce store or a small, monetized personal blog, downtime costs your business money. It isn’t just lost sales you need to worry about, however. Website downtime also costs your business precious customer satisfaction levels and brand reputation in the cut-throat environment that is the Internet. No matter what niche or industry your website operates in, competition is fierce and you need to make sure you stay ahead of the pack in terms of customer satisfaction and brand recognition.

This past March, Apple’s cloud services were knocked off the cloud for some serious cloud downtime amounting to nearly 12 hours. The downtime left millions of users around the globe unable to update apps, make purchases, and install software from the iOS and iTunes Store. Apple’s iCloud services, which include email, were also affected at this time (albeit for a shorter period of time). The brick-and-mortar Apple Stores, which are heavily reliant upon the cloud and the Internet, were left processing old-school credit card impressions instead of utilizing Apple Pay.

Server downtime is something that is dreaded among website owners. If you don’t own the server your site is hosted on, you have no control over the duration of the outage when the server goes down. If you do own the server, then you’re the one responsible for getting it back up and running. Either way, server downtime equates to a nightmare in terms of website downtime. Here are some things you need to keep in mind whether you own your website’s server or not.

Here at Alertra we often discuss the fact that if your business is going to hold a major sale, your website better be ready to handle the traffic. Amazon’s recent Prime Day, which was held earlier this week, is a perfect example of how your site can frustrate customers, even if it doesn’t go down for the count in the middle of the sale.

Does your web hosting provider claim to include a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee with your hosting package? If so, are they holding up to that promise, or are they providing sub-standard service? Furthermore, how do you really know the answer to these questions? If you want to know if your hosting provider’s uptime promise is being kept, you need to know exactly how much downtime your site is experiencing and the reason for any downtime that occurs. The only real way to accomplish these tasks is with a quality website monitoring service.