Website Uptime: 4 Things You Have to Consider

Website owners often talk about the importance of website uptime and how crucial it is to minimize your website downtime. How your web host plays an important role in the uptime of your website is also a hot topic of discussion. When it comes to minimizing your site's downtime, there are four things you absolutely must take into consideration.

1. You Get What You Pay For

There is nothing wrong with trying to find reasonably priced hosting for your site. With that being said, you definitely shouldn't be looking for the cheapest hosting plan you can find. If a deal sounds too good to be true, it usually is. You should, ideally, look for a hosting company that offers 99.9 percent website uptime and actually lives up to that promise. While these hosting services may cost more, the difference in price usually pays for itself. Remember, website downtime costs your business money. If paying more for a quality hosting plan means that your site experiences less downtime, it is definitely worth the difference in price. Especially when you consider the fact that while it may not seem like there is a big difference between a hosting provider that offers 99.8 percent uptime and a provider that offers 99.9 percent uptime, the fact is that the site offering 99.8 percent uptime has twice the downtime of the other provider.

2. Focus on Reputation and Not Hype

When it comes to finding a quality web host that offers reliable website uptime, you need to focus on reputation and quality, not just hype. A promise of 99.9 percent website uptime may be nothing more than a marketing ploy for some website hosting providers. Yes, they will, in the long run, end up paying out a few dollars here and there to their customers when they don't meet the uptime target they promise, but that does you no good when you are suffering lost profits that aren't compensated for in that uptime guarantee. You could potentially lose thousands of dollars due to a higher-than-promised downtime average, while your hosting provider is only refunding a portion of what you actually pay for your hosting plan. When looking for a hosting provider, do your research. Find a hosting provider that has a good reputation when it comes to website uptime. Instead of relying on a guarantee that isn't really worth that much, look for a provider that actually lives up to its promise.

3. Look for Hosting Providers with Quality Hardware

It goes without saying, if the hosting provider you choose has shoddy equipment, your website is going to experience more than its fair share of downtime. If you want to ensure website uptime, you need to be sure that you select a hosting provider that invests in quality hardware. Before signing up for any hosting plan, make sure you know what type of hardware they use and how reliable that hardware tends to be. Also check into how the service maintains its hardware, where it is located, and how many server locations they have.

4. Employ Third-Party Uptime Measures

When it comes to website uptime, you absolutely must employ third-party uptime measures, no matter how good your hosting provider may be. Uptime monitoring services, backup DNS services, and backup hosting plans are crucial to redundancy and redundancy can actually go a long way in minimizing the downtime of your site. While your website host may have a number of its own measures in place to ensure the uptime of their service, you need to put your own measures into place to ensure the uptime of your website.