Uptime is an underrated feature for many webmasters. Often times they are looking for additional features that will allow them to run their scripts and find as much space as possible. What many website owners, especially those that do not have a lot of experience, don’t realize, is that uptime is just as if not more important than other features.
If your website is down, you will not receive any business.
For every minute that your website is down, your visitors will be unable to access your site and therefore will not be able to place any orders. While a little bit of downtime might be alright for content driven sites, it can cripple E-commerce websites that rely on the ability of their customers to place orders. You need to make sure that the cheap web host that you choose is as reliable as possible.
Speak with Customer Support Regarding Uptime
You will find that most cheap hosting companies will make promises that they are able to provide “99.9%” uptime, but this is not a promise that you should take at face value. Are there times during the day that your site will not necessarily be down, but will slow down and make it hard for your customers to make their way through the order process? Temporary error screens can also cripple a business and it is important that your site runs at the optimal level at all times throughout the day. You should speak with a representative at the company and express your concerns about the uptime of their cheap hosting service. Explain to them how much uptime affects your business and make sure that they give you some statistics from the last few months. Keep in mind that if you purchase shared hosting, you may experience more downtime than you would on a dedicated server, especially if the company overloads the servers with accounts. Make sure that you inquire about this as well.
After you make your purchase, you should use a third party service to track your sites uptime for the first month to ensure that you are meeting the marks that were promised by the company. Often times if your site is up for less time than was promised, the company will give you a full refund.
