An Explanation of Web Hosting Uptime Service Guarantee

• February 21, 2011 19:55
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The ultimate aim of anyone who puts up a site on the World Wide Web is for it to be available 24 hours every day round the year.

There’s nothing more irritating to a site owner than having a website that is unavailable most of the time. Actually that defeats the sole purpose of having the site in the first place. This is where web hosting uptime service guarantee comes into play. Apart from the traditional money back guarantee many web hosting companies advertise, uptime guarantee has become a new way to attract prospective clients to sign up for services.

The phrase, “uptime service guarantee” or “up-time guarantee” is meant to be binding words of promise made by web hosting providers to assure their clients that their websites and other web applications will be always online. In web hosting business, uptime guarantee is easier said than done by most companies. In most cases it is just a promotional term used to draw in unsuspecting clients to purchase hosting packages, and some hosts don’t attach any importance to its significance. Most of reliable hosting providers guarantee 99.9% uptime service and strive to maintain just that or even better statistics. I have even seen a few companies that promise as high as 100% uptime service, but I don’t find that feasible at all.

The meaning of uptime guarantee:

The guarantee that a hosted website will be available online for at least 99.9% of the time all year round is very enticing and luring to prospective clients. The practicality of 100% uptime guarantee is very questionable, since an electrical connection issue or hardware upgrade can cause the hosted services to be down for some period of time, which cuts the percentage down. So, 100% uptime guarantee is too good to be true, and you know, if anything is too good to be true, then it actually is. Sadly uptime guarantee is simply an ideal that doesn’t work perfectly well, because it is popularly being misconceived. In reality it means that a web hosting company will strive to keep hosted services online at least for the percentage of promised time in a year. Some reputable firms compensate their clients in some ways, if their uptime guarantees are broken, due to unforeseen circumstances. On the other hand, companies of no repute do not bother to address the broken guarantees they made to their clients, and to them it’s business as usual.

Uptime service guarantee is the relative number of hours hosted web services, such as websites, emails and databases will be available on the web. The period of time it takes for a web service to be unavailable online is known as downtime. Putting it down to pure mathematics, a 98.0% entails that one has to expect a possible 2.0% downtime, which converts to 175 hours and 19 minutes. Isn’t it terrifying to expect one’s website to be unavailable for about a week in a single year? Even 99.0% uptime is not good enough, since the expected 1.0% downtime amounts to 27 hours within just one year. 99.9% uptime during the course of 12 months possibly yields only 8 hours and 46 minutes of downtime. So, 99.9% uptime guarantee is generally acceptable and most sort after in the web hosting industry.

Methods of compensation for uptime guarantee defaulting:

In the web hosting industry there are two (2) most popular methods of compensation for not keeping uptime guarantee. Some hosting companies give discounts to the affected clients. An example is a scenario where a company guarantees 99.9% uptime, but actually achieves only 96%. In this case the clients are entitled to 3.9% discount. Other firms generously provide free web hosting for a specified number of days to make up for lost hours. It is preferable to choose a company that does monthly calculations of uptime percentage, as opposed to yearly calculations, since it is a bit harder to compute accurately the compensation on yearly basis. It is important to choose a web host that is honorable in paying out compensations when it doesn’t keep its guarantee.

How to choose a host that respects its uptime guarantee?

Finding a web host that provides 100% uptime service is unrealistic, but there are several companies that reliably provide 99.9% uptime service. The best way to find them is to look for those known for being generally reliable in their business dealings. Just be aware that downtime is an unavoidable occurrence in the web hosting industry, since interruptions like electrical disconnections, ISP issues and hardware upgrades can cause connectivity issues. The key to this problem is to look for a hosting company that is known for providing outstanding services and keeping its promises to clients. Like I said before, 100% uptime guarantee is a myth that shouldn’t be taken seriously. Personally I believe that a trustworthy web hosting company is the best guarantee, since a client is assured a timely response to every downtime.

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