Web hosts offer a whole plethora of different uptime guarantees and refund policies. Since it’s important that your site is up for as much of the time as possible, especially if you are running a business online, you must read the small print before you buy hosting and make sure that you’re getting a good deal on your uptime guarantee.

The best guarantee you can find would be something like 99.5% uptime, where the host publicly publishes all downtime and automatically credits you with your refund for every minute of downtime which falls below this guarantee, even if you didn’t report it. This is the most honest and fair system, but it is not a given, so you must make sure that’s what you’re getting.

There are several other possible uptime guarantees you may encounter. Some hosts require you to submit detailed reports of downtime which must be verified against their logs. Others will only refund you any money if there are five hours of downtime in a row – and of course, you might find your site is down for four hours today, three hours the next day, and so on, but never five hours in a row, meaning no refunds. Yet others will offer 99.999% uptime guarantee, but you have to buy into one of their most expensive packages to get it, which will probably make downtime refunds worthless. Finally, some might seem to offer an incredible deal – 20% of your bill refunded if downtime drops below 100% - but in the small print you’ll find that you can only receive one downtime credit per month.

If the guarantee is unclear or doesn’t seem reasonable, choose a different host – there are literally thousands of hosts available, and you need not try to cope with confusing or misleading guarantees when you can find a host who is far more upfront.

It is also worth checking what measures are in place to cope with connectivity problems. Most hosts should have several different connections which they can switch between to technical glitches and slow service caused by traffic surges. Phone them up and ask them; getting to speak to a real human being is a telling indicator of an all-round good service, so it is always worth giving them a call with some question or other and seeing what level of support you are offered. Also find out about backup and disaster plans.

The best web hosting companies can offer high uptime guarantees because they have invested in the best protective software and equipment to automatically guard against downtime situations. 95% uptime sounds like a good deal, but that’s over eight hours a week of downtime, and you don’t know that your best potential client won’t try to visit during that time.

Never assume that a guarantee means your site will never be down – inevitably, it will be, because no technology is perfect and is bound to go down now and again. Ask for references and check up on their reputation for downtime levels.

Author: Natalie Catchpole

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