There's No Such Thing as Zero Downtime Hosting
Sure, we'd all like to believe that our site will never, ever go down for any reason. But the truth is that despite what your hosting company may claim, the potential for downtime always exists. Promises that your site will be up 100% of the time are not only statistically impossible, they are also dangerously misleading.
I have worked at companies with a large Internet presence; sites that see hundreds of thousands of dollars flow across their servers every day. I can assure you that if anyone is dead serious about minimizing downtime, it's those that stand to lose the most money. But for all the precautions they take, there have always been instances of downtime.
Sometimes it's a particularly clever hacker. More frequently, a router goes down somewhere in Wichita. Occasionally, someone who should know better accidentally cuts power to the cage. There are many, many points of failure in the architecture of the web, and while careful planning and overly redundant backup systems can mitigate the potential for failure, nothing can completely eliminate the possibility. Murphy's Law tends to live up to its fullest potential when it comes to web hosting.
Obviously, it behooves you to select your web hosting provider carefully. I shy away from any hosting offer that seems too good to be true, especially where uptime is concerned. I look for reasonable uptime guarantees (99% or better), quality facilities and infrastructure, and good overall reviews. You can learn more about my selection criteria at my web hosting review site, and see my comparisons of popular hosting plans.
In the end, reliability is the single most important factor in selecting a web host for your eCommerce site. Reliability guarantees are good, but more often than not they seem to lure unsuspecting webmasters into a false sense of security. With the wealth of free information available today there is simply no excuse for not researching a potential web host thoroughly. Marketing claims are best taken with a grain of salt, as are reviews by dissatisfied users. When you carefully weigh all facts along with the majority rule opinion, you will usually find that one or two companies stand out from the crowd.
Sure, we'd all like to believe that our site will never, ever go down for any reason. But the truth is that despite what your hosting company may claim, the potential for downtime always exists. Promises that your site will be up 100% of the time are not only statistically impossible, they are also dangerously misleading.
I have worked at companies with a large Internet presence; sites that see hundreds of thousands of dollars flow across their servers every day. I can assure you that if anyone is dead serious about minimizing downtime, it's those that stand to lose the most money. But for all the precautions they take, there have always been instances of downtime.
Sometimes it's a particularly clever hacker. More frequently, a router goes down somewhere in Wichita. Occasionally, someone who should know better accidentally cuts power to the cage. There are many, many points of failure in the architecture of the web, and while careful planning and overly redundant backup systems can mitigate the potential for failure, nothing can completely eliminate the possibility. Murphy's Law tends to live up to its fullest potential when it comes to web hosting.
Obviously, it behooves you to select your web hosting provider carefully. I shy away from any hosting offer that seems too good to be true, especially where uptime is concerned. I look for reasonable uptime guarantees (99% or better), quality facilities and infrastructure, and good overall reviews. You can learn more about my selection criteria at my web hosting review site, and see my comparisons of popular hosting plans.
In the end, reliability is the single most important factor in selecting a web host for your eCommerce site. Reliability guarantees are good, but more often than not they seem to lure unsuspecting webmasters into a false sense of security. With the wealth of free information available today there is simply no excuse for not researching a potential web host thoroughly. Marketing claims are best taken with a grain of salt, as are reviews by dissatisfied users. When you carefully weigh all facts along with the majority rule opinion, you will usually find that one or two companies stand out from the crowd.
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