The latest research from Hosting Facts has revealed the average website is down three hours a month due to the downtime of web host providers.
With 99.9% uptime promises, guarantees and refunds from host providers, Hosting Facts says it doesn’t really matter when your site is down if you have lost all traffic. According to the research, on average businesses can lose around $10.6m a year.
The loss for small businesses may not be as high, but the loss is relative to the size of the company. And when a small company experiences a down website, the recovery can be challenging, especially when it is for an extended amount of time.
The research Hosting Facts carried out was thorough and extensive, which goes to the credibility of the data the company has revealed. After purchasing shared web hosting plans from 32 providers, Hosting Facts then monitored their uptime through Pingdom for an entire year.
In an emailed press release, Founder of Hosting Facts, John Stevens, pointed out the performance of the companies in the study runs the gamut in terms of uptime. Stevens goes on to say, “In conclusion, we found out that the average web hosting provider had 760 outages and uptime of 99.59% throughout the year. However, it’s worth mentioning that many web hosts promise or have 99% or even 99.9% uptime guarantee (which they failed).”
What is a Web Hosting Company?
Put simply, a web hosting company provides a service which allows you to post your website on the internet.
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It is where your website lives so it can be accessed by everyone who gets online, which is why the service level agreement or SLA the hosting company offers is so important. Uptimes starting at 99% and up are common, but as Stevens pointed out not everyone is able to deliver on that promise.
Web Hosting Uptime Statistics – Top 10 Hosting Companies
Hosting Facts puts MidPhase at number one with 99.991% uptime with a total of 19 outages and downtime of 45 minutes for the year. If you average it out for the whole year it comes out just shy of four minutes per month.
Compared to the average downtime of three hours per month in the research, MidPhase is delivering a high degree of reliability for businesses hosting their website on its platform.
Bluehost was second with the same percentage of uptime and fewer outages at only seven, but the downtime went up to 52 minutes for the year. Again, this is a great number from Bluehost considering the overall average.
DigitalOcean was third at 99.989% uptime, 11 outages and 58 minutes of downtime, followed by SiteGround at 99.988% uptime, 26 outages and 58 minutes of downtime.
Site5 rounds up the top five with an uptime of 99.986%, 19 outages, and downtime of 83 minutes.
HostGator, A Small Orange, iPage, HostPapa, and FactComet are number six through 10 respectively.
Importance of Uptime
As ecommerce continues to make up a larger percentage of many small businesses, uptime is critically important. This is because online consumers now expect 100% uptime with fast access.
With more people using their mobile device as their primary internet connectivity tool, there is little room for mistakes.
According to Google, one out in two people expects a page to load within two seconds. If it takes more than three seconds, 53% of visitors are more likely to abandon the page. Just imagine how much worse it is if the site is not available at all?
You can take a look at how the 32 hosting companies are performing on HostingFacts and on the live statistics page.
Image: Depositphotos.com
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Hi David,
Thank you for the info.
Always check with Better Business Bureau. Listen up friends, I had a very bad experience with 1&1 Internet. Concerning the business dealings of One and One Internet: In my opinion, I would advise every business person to avoid 1 and 1 Internet.
In my opinion, 1&1 Internet is the worst of the worst. They would not let me cancel domains I no longer wanted. The company cost me a good business, I should have checked them out with the BBB, too late I found out they had an F rating, in my opinion, the Mafia is more trustworthy. I have kept all the substantiating evidence and may one day sue for at least $50,000.
It can really affect your business for you don’t know who is visiting your site and just deciding to leave because it is not working.
Really amazing post with much helpful information. Thank you very much for writing great stuff about web hosting services for us.
A very good entry for anyone who starts their adventure with WordPress. Thanks.