100% uptime guarantee is one of the commonest hosting features showcased by almost all web hosts, for attracting customers. So, what actually uptime means, how does it impact your website, and how can you be sure if the uptime being provided by the hosting company is genuine? Let’s take a look.

In web hosting parlance, Uptime denotes the amount of time a website is active on the Web. So, the higher the website uptime, the higher is its accessibility. Thus when a web hosting company assures 100% uptime, it is followed by a natural assumption that the website would function uninterrupted on the Web. But such factors as server or network failure, and maintenance activities, make it impossible to achieve a 100% uptime. With such facts to consider, no honest web hosting service would promise a 100% uptime.

When a web host assures a certain uptime, it really means that the host will strive to provide the guaranteed uptime, and in case of failure, will compensate the customer. Thus if a web hosting provider assures 99.99% uptime, but has been able to deliver only 90.99%, then the web host is obliged to compensate customer for the 9% downtime. Most uptime guarantees are provided for a monthly time period. 99.9% uptime guarantee is considered a good statistic as the downtime is low (43.2 minutes).

When a web hosting solution claims 99.999% or 100% uptime, make sure if it refers to network uptime or server uptime. Network uptime refers to the uptime of the hosting network (ex: LAN, WAN) provided by the web host. So, if this network goes down and your website goes offline as a result, then the webhosting company compensates for the downtime. Server uptime, on the other hand, is the uptime of the server that hosts your website. So, if your website is inaccessible because of a server failure, you will be entitled to compensation.

Network uptime guarantee is a loss to customers because network failure rarely occurs, except for natural calamities or man-made catastrophe. If your website goes down because of server failure, the network would still be operating as your server is only one of the hundreds or thousands of servers that form the network. So, you would not be eligible for any compensation. Network uptime guarantee offered by web site hosting providers is just a trick of the trade.

Uptime is significant for individuals, and crucial for businesses. So, it is always important that you choose reliable web hosting services. Perform an extensive research on different web hosts; utilize forums and blogs that provide customer reviews on hosting services, to decide on the credibility of a service provider. Make use of uptime monitoring tools, which monitor your website uptime over a period of time. Such tools are available online free-of-cost, or can be subscribed to for a fee in case an in-depth monitoring is required.

Although many factors are responsible for your website success, bandwidth is an important factor to consider. If you have more bandwidth allocated for your website, you can handle more traffic to your site. Whether you are opting for a Linux web hosting or Windows web hosting plans, first you need consider the bandwidth offered by the hosting providers. It is important because it affects the websites performance and traffic.

What is bandwidth?

Bandwidth is the amount of data allowed to transfer through a network at a given time. It normally denotes the data transmission capacity of a network or connection. The unit for measurement is Bits/Bytes per Second [Bps]. Normally a full page of word document is having about sixteen thousand bits. Video files, flash and graphics file has more bandwidth usage than plain text. Website hosting providers normally calculate the usage and bill their clients for excessive data transfer.

How much bandwidth needed?

You can estimate the bandwidth requirement by roughly calculating the webpage size multiplied by number of pages and then number of visitors. Take for instance that your webpage has 30K of images and 2k of HTML files, then the total size of your webpage is 32k or in other words, your webpage is having 32k of data. Now, multiply it by expected number of visitors for your domain per month. For example, if you expect one hundred thousand visitors, then [32*100000=3.2G] you might require 3.2G of data transfer/bandwidth usage. In the same way, you can calculate for all the web pages and determine the bandwidth requirement.

How can I save bandwidth?

Optimizing your bandwidth usage helps you in reducing the bandwidth consumption and server load, there by increasing the performance of your website. Images and graphic files in your webpage generally consume more bandwidth than text. Reducing the file size of the images by changing the format and back-linking image files, will help you to minimize the page size. Using cascading style sheet [CSS], for creating WebPages also helps in reducing the file size.

Many hosting companies are now offering unlimited bandwidth plans for their customers. For less than five dollars per month, you can get unlimited plans from various cheap web-hosting providers.

Virtual Private Server [VPS] hosting is the preferred choice for small and medium sized companies. It is cost-effective and offers full features of dedicated web hosting service. Though the same physical hardware is shared among different users, the virtual private network allows users to have full control over the server. Each virtual partition is completely isolated form other clients and webmasters can reboot server independently. VPS hosting also offers root access, memory, IP, system libraries and configuration files.

Some of the advantages of the VPS hosting are,

Isolation: VPS accounts are isolated from other users/servers, minimizing the risk of unauthorized access and security. It also helps to minimize any downtime errors and ensures fast access of websites.

Self-management: It allows the end users to install programs, take backup, and reinstall without any technical support from business hosting providers. It is one of the best hosting features of VPS.

Flexibility: custom firewall settings are not possible in shared hosting service; however, in VPS structure the custom firewall settings are feasible. In Linux-VPS- hosting services you can open/close ports that are normally not allowed in shared hosting.

Protected Email-accounts: Each VPS hosting has its individual mail server, this eliminates the risk of blacklisting your email client due to abuses of other users.

Backup: Virtual management of your secure data and scheduled backup activity is the main advantages of VPS hosting. End-user backup and Admin backup ensure data protection and business continuity.

Business Web Hosting is customized to the requirements of a real-time business environment. Corporate, small- and medium-sized businesses can benefit greatly from an affordable business hosting solution as it provides the entire resources essential to successfully run a business website. As in shared hosting, several accounts are run on a single server. Since server resources are shared, the web host manages the entire system maintenance.

Reliable, cheap, 100% server uptime, etc., are the common features advertised by all web hosts offering business hosting services. How do you choose wisely and go for a web hosting solution that is ideal for your requirements. Here are some guidelines:

The first and foremost aspect to be considered is the resources provided by the web hosting company. Business demands are different; for example businesses need greater disk space, more e-mail accounts, daily data backup, SSLs, and faster bandwidth. Standard webhosting solutions for businesses come with limited resources and hence are not suitable. Web hosts that offer greater amount of resources are recommended. With such hosting accounts, you can have more web pages, and need not restrict e-mail accounts for your employees; data backup and security issues are handled by web hosting provider.

A good business web host holds all business accounts on one server. The number of accounts per server holding business accounts should be considered. The fewer the number of accounts per server, the better the web site hosting solution. This is important because in shared hosting, multiple accounts will be sharing system resources. So, if the number of accounts is less, access to resources is greater, which means faster loading, faster order processing, and reduced possibility of downtime, for your website.

It is essential that you choose a web host that provides customer support with a faster turnaround so that you prevent downtime. Most web hosts prioritize business hosting account holders, and they get faster service than individual account holders.

The server uptime – the amount of time a web server is active – needs to be reliable. High-end technology is essential to achieve an impressive uptime. There are service providers that measure the uptime of hosting companies round the clock. Such services can be utilized to verify the authenticity of a web host’s uptime claim.

Be informed and make a smart choice of hosting solution for your business website.