The Importance of Website Uptime

What is the importance of web hosting uptime? The uptime factor refers to how often your website is accessible to the public. You have to understand that some businesses are so dependent on e-commerce and web marketing, that just a few minutes of downtime (in which the website is unavailable) could cost thousands of dollars in losses.
Therefore, website uptime is a major issue for some companies. Remember that you usually only get one chance to interest an online customer. If that user sees that your website is down he or she may conclude that your company is out of business or not really up to par when it comes to e-commerce. That person’s interest is lost, presumably forever. Frequent downtime reflects poorly on the reputation of a company, especially if that company is selling technology-related products. Honestly, how much faith in a website can a customer have if they apparently can’t manage to keep their own site online?
If your business plan calls for a great deal of online sales or for massive traffic then this feature is very important. Additionally, if you only have limited traffic but are marketing your services to people across the world, then this feature will be important, because of differing time zones.
Most competitive companies offer an uptime percentage of about 99%, and some as far as 99.9%. In addition to an uptime guarantee take note of the company’s attitude towards customer satisfaction. If there is something wrong with your website, then any downtime resulting will not count against the standard 99.9% uptime rate. However, technical difficulties can knock out a website for hours or even days. Make sure that the company you work with has customer support, technical support, and hopefully a phone line that is available 24 hours a day.
How do you go about choosing a web hosting company? It seems as if every company out there claims to have high uptime rates. There is not really a way to verify uptime on your own. Rather, you can get this information from review sites that offer detailed analysis of many top web providers. There are even some websites that now offer uptime tracking for online viewers interested in a web hosting service.
A common claim from the popular hosting providers is ’99% or 99.9% server uptime’ but this often refers only to a server being powered on and doesn’t account for network downtime. Real downtime can potentially be larger than the percentage guaranteed by the provider. Many providers tie uptime and accessibility into their own service level agreement (SLA). SLAs sometimes include refunds or reduced costs if performance goals are not met.
You also need to evaluate the requirements of the application to choose what kind of hosting to use. Such considerations include database server software, scripting software, and operating system. Most hosting providers provide Linux-based web hosting which offers a wide range of different software. A typical configuration for a Linux server is the LAMP platform: Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP/Perl/Python. The webhosting client may want to have other services, such as email for their business domain, databases or multi-media services for streaming media. A customer may also choose Windows as the hosting platform. The customer still can choose from PHP, Perl, and Python but may also use ASP.Net or Classic ASP.
Web hosting packages often include a website builder and a control panel, so the end-user doesn’t have to worry about the more technical and design aspects. These Web Content Management systems are great for the average user, but for those who want more control over their website design, this feature may not be adequate. If you want to professionalize your company and ensure that uptime is never a problem, then look for better quality services that guarantee a 99.9% uptime percentage and have the positive reviews to back up their claims.