About the importance of Uptime of a Hosting server

The importance of Uptime (uptime) on a hosting server is comparable to oxygen: you don't think about it until you have it. Most webmasters consider UpTime to be a factor they don't have to worry too much about… Wrong! Throughout this article we will know the meaning of UpTime and understand why it is so important.

The Uptime it is basically the period in which the server works without interruptions. As long as the server stays up, your site will be available to anyone who wants to visit it. An excellent Uptime is 100%, which implies that the server is kept running 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. A bad Uptime would be 90% or less: it means that, on average, every day it goes down for a while.

DownTime (downtime) is the opposite concept to the Uptime. In other words, when the server goes down.

Every company usually has DownTimes programmed to be able to carry out different maintenance operations; among them, making backup copies of the data on the servers, installing patches or modifying any hardware component. This is absolutely normal, and it is the same company that should give us prior notice, informing of the estimated cut-off time.

We notify our clients of such events through our client desk.

The problem appears when the service is interrupted without prior notice. The causes of this can be various, from technical failures to power problems or even cyber attacks (increasingly common).

From now on, a hosting company that proclaims itself "good" must be prepared to deal with these types of problems.

As a webmaster, one should rest on the fact that the contracted hosting company is capable of seeing these emergencies and acting accordingly, with diligence and accuracy. Your site must be online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all year round. And a server crash prevents you from receiving visits to your site, including access from search engines that index your site. If Google, for example, tries to enter your site at the time it is down, record the fact and results in worse positions in search results.

In global terms, 1 minute can mean the loss of thousands of potential visits, for which a lot of money will be lost. If your site is not for profit, it could still lose credibility. Or incoming links. Or a comment of a visit. Or the fact that a note is shared on social networks... Etcetera.

Needless to say, any web hosting company is aware of how important the UpTime, so you should have security tools and a repertoire of solutions for any type of fall. Otherwise, you will end up losing your customers.

For this reason, most hosting companies offer a service level agreement, setting the amount of uptime they guarantee. This agreement must also specify the offsets with which the company will benefit the client in the extreme case of not being able to meet the standards given in that initial agreement.

As a webmaster, one should always check these agreements before hiring a hosting service. At Duplika, you can find out about our guarantees by entering here.