The Reasons Why Uptime is Important

We all know that there are many factors that go into making a stable, efficient, and exciting website. There is the website design itself, how well it is put together, the functionalities it has, and how it looks. Then there is the hosting server itself, how good its resources are, its location on the globe–which we discussed thoroughly last time—and how stable it is. That last part is the focus of our blog post this week: Uptime!

Uptime is extremely important for a website’s health and longevity! Without it, a website is, well, simply non-existent. A ship permanently anchored in a harbor is still a ship, but is it fulfilling its purpose? The same goes for a website. Technically, it still exists as a collection of files, but what makes a website a website is if it serves its intended function: blog, e-commerce store, media hosting, etc. Uptime plays a fundamental role in a website’s life, and it might seem like a very simple concept to grasp, but there are a few details you might find surprising. Read on as we dive deep into the topic!

What is Uptime and Why Does It Matter?

In reality, explaining the term uptime–when it comes to web hosting, networks, or websites–is very easy. Uptime is the percentage of time the host, network, or website is online and available. For the sake of brevity, we will stick to just “website” for now, but what we describe can be applied to hosts and networks as well.

If a website is accessible, that means users can open and interact with it. That is the website fulfilling its purpose. Whether it is a simple blog where you get to share your thoughts and engage with a wide audience or an online store that relies on its users to generate revenue, uptime is what matters the most. That is especially true nowadays. With how fast-paced most modern people’s lives are, downtime–the opposite of uptime–can devastate a website’s health or popularity.

In the past, users might have been willing to wait for a website to come back up. It could be a niche website offering a unique service, or it could be the website of a local community or store. Whatever the case, there were not that many websites, so waiting was more acceptable. However, if your website is down, you can bid many potential visitors “goodbye.” Visitors would often move on to the next website instead of waiting.

If you are running an online business, the age-old adage “Time is money” holds even more true. The longer your website is up, the more money it will bring. When it is offline, it does not generate revenue.

Here at FastComet, we fully understand how important uptime is for our customers. That is why we are committed to maintaining at least 99.9% uptime for all our services. That includes our hosting servers, emails, and all supplemental solutions that round out our services. We are all too aware of the bad effects downtime can have and will do everything in our power to minimize it so you can focus on the important things. 

To better illustrate the clear distinctionin in uptime between different hosts, below we are providing the corresponding downtime per day, month and year for the following most common availability values: 99%, 99.9%, and 99.99%. The difference might seem marginal, however, the table will show you how those extra digits add up significantly.

You can see how decisively the accepted downtime of your website shrinks per year when hosts commit to 99.99% uptime of their services and your website’s uptime. At FastComet we are no different. We are determined to uphold at least a 99.9% uptime rate, with the vast majority of our servers easily reaching more than 99.97%.

With all of this said, read on as we expand on the two significant reasons why uptime is vital.

Impact on Users

We will begin by explaining how low uptime percentages affect your users. As you can probably already imagine, downtime is not enjoyed by people who want to use a 

website—understandably so. The inability to use a website means they must find another one that can do the things they need. That in itself harms the website’s reputation and chases off its user base. Some might not even come back if they find a website that works for them but is also online all the time.

Here is a quick list we compiled that will illustrate the unpleasant impact downtime can have on a website’s users.

• Hurts Reputation – Reputation is yet another item in a laundry list that is vital to a website’s prosperity (uptime holding a prominent place on that list itself). The reality of the modern world is that if a website has a reputation for being unreliable, that will reflect in online reviews, forum threads, Reddit, etc. Word of mouth like that is not what you want;
• Erodes Trust – Hand-in-hand with the previous point, visitors will typically not trust a website that cannot keep itself up to manage their needs. Some smaller sites can get away with it, but even that can stunt their growth significantly. Visitor trust is, you guessed it, another big check on that list we mentioned earlier. A website without visitors is technically fulfilling its purpose, but just barely;
• Damages the Brand – If a hit to your website’s reputation is not enough, downtime can severely damage your brand as a whole. Frustrated visitors will undoubtedly assume that your entire brand is unreliable if the website itself is not.

What we outlined may be only three bullet points, but you can see for yourself how significant they are. Try to remember when was the last time you saw or used a website or a brand that had a bad reputation or that you did not trust. We are almost certain very few people online would do such a thing unless they have some ulterior motive. Customers, ourselves included, simply prefer not to risk it on untrustworthy sites.

This perfectly leads us to the next part of why uptime is important for a website’s well-being. Do you know what a website does not do if it does not get visitors? It does not generate revenue.

The Business Impact

Going back to the saying we used at the beginning of this blog post: Time is money. In this case, uptime is money. It makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? If a website is down, it does not get visitors and, therefore, no income. At the end of the day, a website needs visitors to not only flourish but pay for itself. It is the same thing as turning off your fridge and expecting it to keep your produce fresh. It is simply not how it works, and in this section, we will lay out all of the genuinely nightmarish effects downtime can have on your business.

There is a reason we used the word ‘nightmarish’: The havoc downtime can wreak is truly the stuff of nightmares for a business owner.

• Loss of Revenue – We mentioned earlier how a website that is not up earns no money, which cannot be more true. Customers cannot buy your products or services. If you are running an eCommerce website, SaaS platform, or any online service in general, you can wave any revenue goodbye if your website is down;
• Negative SEO – SEO is a long and complicated topic that necessitates its own blog post (or series of posts) to be fully delved into. Needless to say, it is vital to the prosperity of a website. However, if your website has bad uptime, search engines will deem it unreliable. Its search rankings will likely drop, reducing the amount of organic traffic it receives. Less organic traffic, fewer new visitors;
• Productivity Loss – When a website is down, employees cannot work efficiently or at all. That can cause missed deadlines, delays, or additional–unnecessary–costs that could be avoided;
• Recovery Costs – Speaking of additional costs, recovering from downtime can be expensive for the business. Typically, such a recovery involves emergency intervention from specialists, overtime, or additional infrastructure investments;
• Legal Issues – If your website handles sensitive information–financial transactions, for example–or offers specialized services such as healthcare, then you might even run into some legal and compliance issues. Extended downtime means your users cannot access these services, which could lead to compliance violations, contract breaches, etc.

As you can see, downtime will impact your bottom line, but it will also cause many other problems. Yes, ultimately, your website will suffer a loss of revenue, but a nightmarish avalanche of other issues will also likely arise from bad uptime. Because of that, it is vital that you strive to keep your website’s uptime percentage as high as possible. Here are some ideas!

Ensuring Maximum Uptime

So far, we have discussed all the horrible things that can happen to your website, reputation, and brand if your site suffers bad uptime. That is all doom and gloom, so it is time to offer solutions instead of just talking about the bad things. Naturally, as you can imagine, the easiest thing to do is “just have good uptime on your website.” We are here to help you achieve that. Here is some advice and a few tips to help you maximize your website’s uptime.

1. Choose a Reliable Hosting Provider – Your website starts and ends with your hosting provider. Without a host, your website will not be online and, therefore, not be a website. A hosting provider should guarantee at least 99% uptime of their own services and offer solutions to apply that guarantee to your website. Here at FastComet, we are determined to not only ensure our own hosting solutions have an uptime of 99.9%, but we will also work hard for your websites to minimize their downtime;
2. Do Not Underestimate Security – Online security is no longer just a suggestion. Websites must prioritize safeguarding themselves from cyber attacks. Such a task requires effort from both the website and the web host. That is why at FastComet, the security of our customers and their websites is one of our main priorities. We offer a comprehensive and robust security suite, two-factor authentication for your accounts, and reliable off-site backups to ensure that your site’s files are safe and secure, ready to be deployed in case of an emergency;
3. Choose a Scalable Hosting Plan – Sometimes downtime can occur not because of a cyber attack or unreliable host. Sometimes, your website can go down because it has outgrown its web host’s available resources. That is perfectly normal; it means your website is thriving! That is why choosing a host that can scale as your website grows or shrinks is vital. With that idea in mind, FastComet has multiple hosting plans to satisfy websites from the smallest to the biggest! We have created our plans to give you the best bang for your buck and make switching to a bigger one a breeze. Our team of technical specialists will migrate all of your data to your new hosting plan swiftly, ensuring minimal downtime;
4. Use a CDN – Nowadays, CDNs sound like magic with how good they are at what they do. Not only do they make accessing a website easier from around the world, no matter the hosting location, but they can secure it and boost its performance significantly. Using a CDN will help protect your website from malicious traffic that can potentially cause downtime and will also distribute the load so that your hosting server does not take the brunt of it;
5. Keep Your Software Updated – We know that updating your website’s software–especially if you have a lot of it–can be tedious or even scary. What if something goes wrong, and some random plugin you just updated breaks your site? Firstly, you trim that plugin and ensure you only use what your website needs regarding software, code, etc. Minimize bloat. Secondly, despite that risk, you have to ensure you do not let your website’s software–and all third-party plugins, themes, modules, and so on–lapse into severe outdatedness. Outdated software has security vulnerabilities that even the toughest host or best CDN cannot help you with. There is a reason why developers release patches alongside their major updates!

In addition to these five tips, we recommend you set up an alert system that will let you know when your website is down. That can help with not only fixing that issue but also analysing any patterns that may occur to further resolve the situation. Finally, keeping your website optimized is also a good idea. It will reduce server load, and alongside a CDN, it will boost the site’s performance. Both will contribute to a more stable website.

What we described above is a lot to keep in mind. However, any good host should be able to help you with most of those. At FastComet, we will not only offer you stellar hosting services, but our support team can assist you with connecting your website to a CDN, optimizing it, or migrating it to a bigger hosting plan. All the while, we will not compromise on security and will strive to keep downtime to a minimum. All you need to do is get in touch with us!

Uptime is Non-Negiotable

And that is not an exaggeration. Without uptime, your website may as well not be a website at all. It is just a pile of files, not fulfilling their purpose. Uptime is vital to a website’s success and prosperity. Instability and unreliableness are a quick way to ensure potential customers are put off, and SEO bots tank the site’s search ratings. It is not all about the loss of revenue, as downtime can lead to a landslide of other issues, which cause more problems and then more. Where does it stop? It stops when the website finds a good host and follows the advice and steps we offered above.