How can we Monitor Web Sites for Downtime?

Many of today's web hosting providers offer 99% uptime for their web servers. If you have already chosen one or if you are planning to use one with such a high uptime should you be concerned on the whole matter anyway?

Let's see how much 99% uptime means. For a 30-day month, you have a total of 720 hours. 99% of this is 712.8 hours. Are you comfortable with your website taking a day off every month? And this if 99% uptime happens. Can your web hosting provider back up its uptime promises with real facts?

For those in the Internet business, the availability of their website is a major concern. The cost of downtime for web businesses can amount to $10,000 an hour. And this is without counting the losses caused by missed opportunities and lost sales. Losses in image and credibility these businesses suffer because eventual downtime is even harder to quantify.

The best way to avoid that while ensuring your business is online is to have monitoring reports available on your web host's uptime.

For companies or individuals having their web hosting providers monitored by a third party is a guarantee not only that their money is well spent, but also, a most importantly, that their Internet business is up and running.

Monitored by a third party is beneficial even for the web hosting providers. That is serious web hosting providers. Offering reports of their uptime monitored by a third party and placing links to them on their homepage are bound to boost the confidence of existing customers as well as one of the prospecting customers in the quality of service that host is providing for its customers.

Having a web host that provides monitoring of its uptime by a third party is the best guarantee that you can get for your web site's uptime. With such level of service, you can be sure that the money you are spending for your web presence can give your or your company the best return on investment.