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Web Hosting

Most web hosts today have an uptime guarantee. They promise that your website will be available a certain percentage of the time, with some hosting companies promising as much as 99.999% uptime! But what does this guarantee REALLY mean? And are you truly getting the uptime that your host has promised?

What The Uptime Guarantee Means

An uptime guarantee is typically used as a way to measure the reliability of the service a web host can provide. In the case that they do not give you this ‘level’ of service, they may compensate you according to the terms of your agreement.

So how much downtime is allowed before the guarantee is broken? The chart below lists the allowable downtime for some typical uptime guarantees.

	Allowable Downtime
99.5% Uptime	3 hours, 36 minutes
99.8% Uptime	1 hour, 26 minutes, 24 seconds
99.9% Uptime	43 minutes, 12 seconds
99.99% Uptime	4 minutes, 19.2 seconds
99.999% Uptime	25.92 seconds

When your downtime exceeds these numbers, then your guarantee is broken and you are eligible for compensation.

But Don’t JUST Expect To Be Compensated For Excessive Downtime

What many people do not realize is that web hosts will not notify you when you site has suffered excessive downtime. Even worse, it is highly unlikely that you will be automatically compensated.

The guarantee is somewhat of a game. Web hosts try to achieve the level of service that they have promised. But if they miss that level, they know that only a few of their customers will notice. And of those few customers that notice, even fewer will have records which indicate how much time their website was inaccessible. And of those customers that have records, few directly ask for a refund. As a result, they rarely have to issue compensation. They win the game.

So if you want to make sure that you are indeed receiving your guaranteed uptime, you need to have appropriate records from an uptime monitoring service. These services check your website at regular intervals to verify availability. The drawback is that these services can be expensive. But there are some free services.

Free Uptime Monitoring Services

Montastic – Checks your website every 10 minutes and you can receive alerts via email
Basic State – Checks your website every 15 minutes and you can receive alerts via email or SMS text message
Service Uptime – Checks your website every 30 minutes

Know of other great services? Let us know so that we can add them to this list.

Switching Hosts? Don’t Choose One By The Uptime Guarantee

An uptime guarantee means very little unless you can prove downtime. And whether or not you do get compensated, having your website down is often more costly than the free month of service which is often issued as compensation.

So instead, when looking for a new host, don’t go by the guarantee. Sure, you can use it as an initial guide to help eliminate bad hosts. But what you should request is the company’s actual uptime history, which shows how well they are achieving their guarantee. Unfortunately, this might be hard to get. So as an alternative, you can also read reviews from current and past customers, as well as visit various online hosting guides which rank web hosts according to their service.

So, how is your host doing? Have you been getting your promised uptime?

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Tags: downtime, shared hosting

15 Responses to “Are You Really Getting 99% Uptime From Your Host?”

On January 22, 2009 at 8:15 pm,Jen wrote:
I really couldn’t say if I have EVER noticed my host being down but then again I have monitored it either. I am a HostGator fan. Picked them randomly, got lucky and love them.
This may be a little blunt but unless your host REALLY sucks and has alot of downtime (in that case you should be changing anyway) who has the time and the energy to monitor it and go back and try to get compensated for it?
On January 22, 2009 at 8:49 pm,Velvet Blues wrote:
@Jen: Indeed, it would make sense to change hosts if you suffer from regular downtime.
But if you have a business website and are paying a lot of money for hosting, then monitoring might be worthwhile. For example, I have a client who is paying almost $200 per month. And while he has not noticed any downtime, there could be times that his site is down such as overnight, when he is sleeping. (Web hosts like to perform maintenance and server reboots when people are less likely to be viewing websites.) A monitoring service keeps web hosts honest. And if he finds out that he isn’t getting the uptime he is paying for, I am sure that he’d like to be able to get his $200 back.
But yes, for the average person on shared hosting who is paying no more than $20/month, it might just make sense to switch hosts and forget the monitoring services.
And yes, Hostgator is great. You get so much BANG for the buck!
On January 22, 2009 at 10:15 pm,Ajith Edassery wrote:
Hey this is an eye opener because I guess most people go by those nice landing page ads of hosting services that guarantee 99.99% uptime. I certainly went by that along with the ratings (later I figured out that even those ratings are paid because I myself have written paid reviews for them)
The services mentioned sound really good. I am somehow scared to use signed up services because most spams I receive are from hosting, submission, email marketing, social network related services other than those wonderfully named popular drugs
On January 22, 2009 at 10:58 pm,Velvet Blues wrote:
@Ajith: Wow, so you are one of those people that helps the bad hosts stay in business?! lol. Yes, its a shame, all information is tainted.
Yes, I too am especially wary of spam. But at this point, I already get so much that I have given up the fight. But those monitoring services are legit. So you might get a few unwanted newsletters, but that’s about it.
On January 23, 2009 at 2:04 pm,Blog for Bloggers wrote:
I currently use godaddy, why?
I have no idea, they have more down time than most every company i’ve seen. Maybe like an hour every week for the last month.
But like most companies, they do a tricky thing. If you notice your site goes down late at night (it does for me) and then when you email them about it they say “Oh well it’s seems to be fine NOW” but “if it happens again just tell us.”
It really bothers me but honestly it’s expected from them
On January 23, 2009 at 3:21 pm,Velvet Blues wrote:
@Blog for Bloggers: Yeh, GoDaddy isn’t the best host. But they do have a strong brand (which is why people buy from them) and cheap domains.
Yes, many hosts conveniently schedule their downtime during low traffic hours. But with GoDaddy, they are very inexpensive… so you can’t really expect that much.
On January 24, 2009 at 12:01 am,Forsaken @The Blogging Park wrote:
I host all my sites at Hostgator, and as everyone knows, their up time can not be rivaled by any other mainstream hosts in this industry.
By the way, I use Internet seer (free version) to monitor my sites up time, and needless to say, Hostgator is true to its word. 100% up time all the way.
On January 24, 2009 at 12:11 am,Richael Neet wrote:
I had used many web hosting services during my time online…ranging from Byethosting’s free service to the Planets dedicated servers. Up time of these servers (or rather the hosting space) is critical for the success of any business or online presence. Some web hosting companies (mainly the resellers on Digital Point) I was a client for were prone to timeout during periods of heavy traffic.
Not far ago, web hosting companies were promising (actually guaranteeing) 100% up time, which is not possible at all. I hardly come across 100% hosts now (except for some wannabe’s on Digital Point) but there are plenty of 99.9% up time hosts who usually fail to deliver. I did not know that you can claim for compensation by declaring evidence of downtimes, using the services you mentioned.
I, however, do not need compensation as at now. My hosting company, Hostgator is top notch surpassing any other setup in the hosting industry.
On January 24, 2009 at 9:33 am,Velvet Blues wrote:
@Forsaken: Yes, HostGator is good. There is the odd hiccup with their services, but they typically beat their guarantee.
I’ll take a look at Internet Seer and add it to this list. Thanks.
@Richael Neet: Yes, that is the biggest scam out there. 100% uptime is not possible. (Usually these services have the actual uptime in really fine print.)
As for free hosting, I did use one great host when I first started with the web. And it was a great host that no longer exists. But what happened was that one day I had a website and files, and the next day I had nothing… After that, I’ve stayed far away from free hosts. You know what they say, you get what you pay for!
On January 25, 2009 at 5:16 am,Kurt Avish wrote:
I have not yet thought about this issue. I dont know if my site is down.. Uhh… you ever visited and it was down? lol. I think I should do a little survey about ,my blog past I have sign up with Montastic you mentioned above while reading this post. Am gonna have a look now whether my host is squeezing me
On January 25, 2009 at 6:48 pm,Velvet Blues wrote:
@Kurt: Well, so far I’ve never noticed your site being down. Of course, I don’t visit your site THAT often. So chances are, I won’t catch it when its down. This is why I like monitoring services. They are ALWAYS checking. So whether or not you notice it, they will.
On January 26, 2009 at 7:51 pm,Nihar wrote:
My hosting service had lot of downtimes, i never really counted or calculated how much was in total. But using that automated service you provided helps. But, no service in the world can give 99.5% downtime. this is what i think. every service might have some prob or the other.
On January 27, 2009 at 2:58 am,Velvet Blues wrote:
@Nihar: Hmm. I think that 99.5% uptime is definitely possible, as well as 99.9%. The only non-achievable uptime amount would be 100%. I am always surprised when I see web hosts claiming to be able to do so. Of course, there is usually some very fine print, coupled with a few asterisks which says their actual guaranteed uptime.
On September 23, 2009 at 3:30 pm,EZ Website Monitoring wrote:
99.9% is definitely possible and most hosts do achieve it. Another good service to consider adding to your list of monitoring services is EZ Website Monitoring.
On December 11, 2010 at 4:43 am,Jeremy wrote:
Currently I am with HostingSource, they advertise Dell servers but when you talk to them they just use off the shelf parts. I am currently moving to my 4th server in 12 months because they keep failing. A 6 hour transition is now going on hour 48. I have had almost 3 weeks of downtime since last November. And they have a 99% uptime guarantee. Overall they are just crap and I will be moving as soon as possible.