Web uptime monitoring service Pingdom has put together a report about things to consider with regards to Web hosting uptime and reliability. The report talks about whether there is such a thing as 100% uptime (there isn’t), that 99.9 and 99.8 are further apart than it looks (the post office uses this math too) and that maintenance time isn’t included in uptime reports. It’s worth a look just to understand how some terms are utilized in the web hosting industry.
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This was a great post. I know that I had to do a lot of this type of research when looking for a dedicated server to use for our site at work. I realize that this post was referring mostly to shared Web hosting, but the points are still valid when talking about dedicated hosting.
We chose to go with Rackspace for a lot of reasons.
1) They guarantee, in writing, 100% uptime. While we are not naive enough to believe that are Web site will be available 86,400 seconds per day, 365.25 days per year, we did recognize a good thing when we saw it. Basically, if our site goes down for more than an hour or so (I don’t remember the exact figures off the top of my head), they start shaving money off of what we owe.
2) They were honest and up-front. They made it clear that the 100% uptime does not include regular maintenance on the server. However, they also have specialists assigned specifically to examining the trends of your Web site traffic to ensure that all scheduled maintenance occurs at times when your site is historically inactive.
3) The price, although it seems outrageous when compared to shared hosting, was actually amazingly reasonable when compared to similar plans from other providers.
4) The feedback I’ve seen throughout the Web.
5) The limitations of our hosting are well laid out in our contract.
Also, regarding shared hosting, I discovered another major gotcha (related to the point about nothing being unlimited) that I’ll probably be posting about in the next few days. While it hasn’t been an issue for my hobby sites, it very well could be if our host decided to crack down.
I think one of the hardest things on cheap hosting is getting the support you need. I do agree though that you need to watch out for what your talking about.