What Happens if Your Web Host's Power Goes Out?

Here at Alertra, we take uptime seriously. We have given our blog readers quite a bit of advice regarding how to choose the right web host, since the wrong web host can result in unwanted and unwarranted downtime. If your site suffers from excessive amounts of downtime, you're going to be losing profits. That means that you need to find a host that puts measures into place to ensure that your site is only down when it absolutely has to be. While most sites advertise 99 percent uptime or even higher, many people don't realize that an uptime rate of 99 percent still means that your site will be down approximately 7 hours each month. That's 7 hours of lost sales – something no site wants to deal with.

One thing you need to look into when choosing a web host is what will happen if your host's power goes out. If you host with a small hosting company that only has servers in a single location and that location happens to be hit by a storm or other natural disaster, your site could potentially be down for days. Before you decide whether or not a web host is right for you, this is a serious factor that you need to take into consideration.

Does Your Host Have a Contingency Plan?

Your web host's web server should have an uninterruptible power supply. This will ensure that if the power goes out for a little bit, the power supply will keep the server up and running. Multiple power supplies can equate to improved site uptime if the power does go out.

You should also look into hosts that have servers in multiple locations. Having the servers located in multiple locations isn't enough, however. The host needs to be willing and able to put those other locations to work for you should your server's power go out. If your host can't ensure that a power outage won't affect your website uptime, you need to make sure that you take matters into your own hands.

How to Protect Yourself from a Power Outage

There's a saying that if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. This can often be true when it comes to ensuring the uptime of your website. If your host's power goes out and it doesn't look like they are going to be restoring it anytime soon, you'll need to take action yourself. This means having a backup of your website hosted with another hosting provider. If your host's power goes out, you can point your domain to your back-up host until uptime is restored with your primary host. While this may seem redundant, sometimes redundancy is the only way to ensure maximized uptime for your site. Just make sure that your DNS service has a relatively short TTL (time to live) response so that your primary web host isn't back up and running again before your domain can even be pointed to your backup hosting server.