How to Check a Web Hosting Company’s Uptime

When searching for a company to host your website, taking note of the uptime guarantee is just as important as the price of service or the features being offered. The good thing is that nearly every company offers some kind of guarantee. While all of this sounds attractive on the company’s website, there is no way to find out what is really covered without doing some investigating on your own.

In order to get the best possible service, you must first verify the uptime guarantee of a particular web hosting company. Most providers will list this information in the “About Us” or “Support” section of their website. After you locate the fine-print, read it over carefully. If you cannot locate this information, contact the host via email and ask a representative exactly how their uptime is calculated.

Even if the web host does display uptime stats on their website, you should not be sold on those attractive numbers without verifying them. It is still a good idea to contact the provider to find out the actual time frame used to calculate those figures. This is very important as some hosts will just reset their service counter every time they experience a server outage. Through our experience, an uptime guarantee of 99.5% over the course of a year is more reliable than that impressive, yet unbelievable guarantee of 100% that may actually only cover a week’s worth of time. How long the web hosting company’s site stays active is of no concern to you. An uptime guarantee refers to the server hosting your website.

The next step involves verifying how those statistics are actually defined. You should know that scheduled downtime for maintenance usually has no relevance in regard to a company’s uptime guarantee. In most cases, a host will send maintenance notifications up to 30 minutes before a scheduled outage begins. Emergency maintenance may also be required in situations that involve security risks such as a corrupted kernel in the operating system that needs an immediate upgrade.

Does their uptime guarantee only cover the server? or is the network included as well? In a technical sense, your website is considered to be up and running even if the network goes down and your pages cannot be accessed over the internet. What this means is that one too many hosts consider that your website is up even when it’s obviously down.

Taking Advantage of the Guarantee

Keep in mind that what a web host offers is an uptime “guarantee”, which is something you may be able to take advantage of. There might be a cash value or credits applied to your account if the server goes down. This is something you definitely want to know before signing on for an annual contract. If a particular hosts experiences a lot of downtime, receiving credits to your account will not supplement all the potential clients you may have lost. Making yourself familiar with the small details can save you a lot of money in the end. Lastly, choosing to work with reputable hosting companies which have a proven track record, such as Lunarpages or HostMonster, will allow you to achieve the peace of mind that your site is up even when you are not monitoring the status.

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