Written by Jerry . Published on 8 Jul, 2008 . While searching for a web hosting company with best server uptime you’ll find all with 99% uptime. But, are they all 99%?
Certainly not!
Or they themselves can have 99% uptime but not for customers, i.e. it’s very possible that sever on which host itself is running can have 99% uptime, but they are using another server for customers’ websites. Server uptime stats on host’s site can give you a fair idea, but remember, this is all about the machine where host itself is located, and the machine where your site will be hosted may not have same stats.
Verifying server uptime
You can, however, identify the real situation, by having a real experience, i.e. you can’t verify the uptime until you don’t have account with a hosting company. So better is to have their free/test plan first, and monitor your site. This can be helpful though, but many web hosting companies with frequent downtime, reset the counter each time they have a downtime. If you’ve 98% uptime in last three months that’s much better than 99.99% uptime in last one week, and so on.
Other best way to find the best uptime can be, to keep the server uptime monitoring with third party. Third party can give you a fair better idea. If host is providing you with test hosting then it’s more than good, but in case if there’s no such option, you can try monthly service. Do not ever buy six months or yearly plan if you’ve not tried the hosting earlier.
Trying a service and having satisfaction is the best way to decide which long term plan you should buy.
Oh ya, wonder how does a 99% uptime meant in a year of hosting service? Check out this blogpost by Ian: What is 99% uptime anyway? You’ll be surprise that even with a 99.9% uptime guarantee, you still lost 8 full hours of your hosting server in a year!
better use server monitoring services and see it yourself