99.9% uptime guarantees look shiny on paper, but they often mislead customers and it is important to know exactly what they do and do not offer.

The first thing to remember is that a 99.9% uptime guarantee does not mean that the hosting company guarantees that your site will be up for 99.9% of the time. It just means that you can claim compensation of some sort if monthly uptime drops below 99.9%. The second thing of which you need to take note is that no hosting company will ever compensate you more than 100% of your monthly hosting bill. So if an hour of downtime costs you £100 in sales, the fact is that if you only pay £25/month for your hosting, that’s the very most you’re going to get back, and it’s unlikely you’ll get even that. 0.01% of a month is about 40 minutes, so if you’re offered 99.9% uptime and your site is down for less than 40 minutes in a month, you can’t claim any compensation. 40 minutes’ downtime can be a lot of lost revenue if your online business is at all successful. Certainly anything less than a 99.9% uptime guarantee is not worth having – 99.8% is potentially nearly an hour and a half of downtime a month with no compensation.

What is more, you will usually find that you have to actively claim compensation for downtime. Most hosting companies won’t tell you about downtime, so if you don’t notice it, and record it meticulously, you will not receive any refunds. How likely is it that you will know if your website is down between 2am and 6am on a Sunday morning? Quite unlikely! So it could be that you will never actually get round to claiming on the uptime guarantee, even though the hosting company is slipping below 99.9% uptime all the time. Do note, however, that there is software available which can regularly check that your site is online and provide you with detailed logs. If you’re paying a lot for hosting, it may be worth the investment.

You might also find, on a closer inspection of the small print found in the hosting company’s Terms of Service, that the uptime guarantee doesn’t cover disasters out of their control, such as fire, flood or DoS (Denial of Service) attacks. Some also don’t include downtime for upgrading of hardware or software issues. They might even refuse to compensate you for hardware or software problems resulting in downtime. This is ridiculous; what else could possibly go wrong?

There are some hosting companies who actually notify their customers of downtime and automatically credit them when downtime exceeds 0.01%. These are definitely worth looking out for, not least because this is a very honest way to practice and it reflects well on the company’s overall integrity.

So where does this leave us with regard to uptime guarantees? If your website is not for business, it doesn’t really matter if you only achieve about 95% uptime. If you are using it for business purposes, however, do be aware that however good an uptime guarantee, it is never going to adequately compensate you for lost sales during downtime. Your best bet is to forget about guarantees, and actually look at a company’s actual uptime record. This can often be hard to get hold of; companies are often inclined to be dishonest about uptime records if the truth looks bad. Therefore it’s also worth contacting clients of the hosting company and asking them about their experience of uptime history with the host. Public forums can also be helpful in this regard. Ultimately, the testimonials of others about the reliability of a company’s service are far more valuable than a flashy uptime guarantee.

Author: Natalie Catchpole

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