What Is The Importance Of Uptime Guarantee

Posted by: WH13 Administrator on February 25, 2013 Under: Articles

The main reason why people use websites and the internet for transacting and for information seeking is because of the convenience factor. But unless this platform is reliable and with very little disturbance, it would not serve the purpose. While websites need to be hosted onto a reliable server, we also cannot ignore the importance of continuous working of the servers at all point in times. This is often referred to as uptime guarantee which is so critical in today’s internet environment. It is therefore not very surprising when we come across uptime guarantee numbers such as 99.4% or 99.8% or even 100%. It is very important to identify only those hosting companies who not only promise near perfect uptime guarantees, but actually live by it. Let us try and understand why uptime guarantee is so very important and critical for business ventures and even for individuals.

Why The Need For Near Perfect Uptime Guarantee

In today’s highly competitive business environment, even a small downtime could prove very damaging for the particular website. It could not only mean loss of revenues but could also result in damage of reputation and goodwill. While this is a common problem with commercial websites, there are thousands of other services where even a few second’s downtime could prove disastrous. A typical example is the growing demand for performance of surgeries and operations using the power and reach of the internet. In such scenarios, when an operation or procedure is being performed using remote facilities, downtime of the server for even a few seconds could mean the difference between the life and death of the patient. There are other situations like online banking transactions, online payment of bills, and many other services where any uptime guarantee which is less than 99.99% cannot be accepted under any circumstances.

How To Read Between The Lines

While there is no doubt that uptime guarantee is very important and critical as a customer it is useful if you could try and decipher the various guarantees that are given by web hosting companies. There are many service providers who offer 99% uptime guarantee. If one looks at the figures closely this could in real time translate to around 430 hours of downtime in a particular month. This in effect is equal to your web hosting server being down for almost 7 hours which cannot be accepted in most of the situations. Hence, it is always better to look for web hosting companies or individual who are not only able to promise 99.9% uptime guarantee but also are able to deliver on this promise.

Conclusion

Further it is also important to be clear about the various downtimes that may not be covered under such uptime guarantees. User errors, server maintenance and a few other situations are usually not covered under most of the uptime guarantees. Hence, as an end user you should know to read the fine print and decipher the meaning of the same to avoid being put into difficulties and uncertainties.

Compare Hosting Features with Uptime Guarantee