Why Your Website Host’s “100% Guaranteed Uptime” Promise is Bogus — and What to Do About It

by Louis Kingston

It’s been said that the devil is in the details. Well, along the same lines — and as we all know from miserable experience — when it comes to guarantees, the devil is in the small print. And there’s no better (or worse) example of this than with respect to the gleaming, confidence-inspiring claim by web hosts that they deliver 100% guaranteed uptime. Except, well, they don’t.

Here’s the thing: what you, everyone you know, and even random strangers in the street define as uptime — i.e. a website being online, operational and accessible — is not how web hosts define uptime. Confused? Of course, you are. To make sense of this, you need to think like a web host.

Multiple Pieces of the Uptime Puzzle

There are multiple pieces of the uptime puzzle: the server on which your website lives, the data center that physically houses multiple servers, the ISP that connects to the internet, and the carrier that links traffic between multiple ISPs. The uptime guarantee offered by web hosts begins and ends with the server and, if they own it, the data center. It does not include issues or problems with the ISP or carrier. As such, if there are points of failure in either of those components, then when your website does go down, your host will technically be meeting its promise. You’ve heard of a non-apology apology? Well, this is a non-guarantee guarantee — and it’s just as lousy.

Less than 100% Uptime = the Same Story

Now, you may have a website host that doesn’t sing from the 100% uptime/zero downtime songbook. It may, for example, promise 99.99% guaranteed uptime, or pledge some other Ivory soap-inspired technical cleanliness standard. Yet again, the same murky logic described above applies: as long as the host’s servers and (if owned) data center are humming along, then it’s an uptime guarantee party and everyone’s invited.

The Real Guarantee

At this point, you may be wondering — and not in a curious, childlike way, but in an agitated “what on earth is going on here!?” way — about what recourse you have available if and when your host does, indeed, bear responsibility for your website going down. That’s where the Service Level Agreement (SLA) kicks in.

Basically, in most cases, the SLA between you and your web host will entitle you to a prorated rebate based on downtime that meets two conditions: 1) the downtime is the responsibility or fault of the web host, and not the ISP, the carrier, the power company, hackers, natural disasters, wizard spells, alien invasion (or just alien visitation), or any other factor that is beyond its control; 2) the downtime can be proven.

So for example, if your business pays $100/month for managed web hosting and your site goes down for half a day— and both of these conditions are met — then you’ll either get around $3.33; most likely as a credit that will be applied to your next bill. Quite the luxurious guarantee, isn’t it?

What You Can Do About It

The bad news is that you can’t demand that your website host’s 100% uptime guarantee is, in fact, a 100% uptime guarantee as you, and pretty much everyone else, would define it. Unless the FCC and FTC decide that this is false advertising (and they haven’t done that… yet), then the splashy promise will remain– and so will the legalese fine print.

But the good news is that you can equip yourself with a globally trusted advanced website monitoring solution like AlertBot, so that you instantly know exactly when your site goes down, why it went down and for how long. You can then use this data to pinpoint problems and fix issues immediately. AlertBot’s popular health map reports deliver crucial performance metrics direct to your inbox to assure you stay on top of your sites. This will also determine whether you should change hosts to one that is relatively better at keeping their promises.

Give AlertBot’s FREE trial a try today. There’s no billing information required, no installation, and you’ll be setup within minutes. Click here.

Louis is a writer, author, and avid film fan. He has been writing professionally for tech blogs and local organizations for over a decade. Louis currently resides in Allentown, PA, with his wife and German Shepherd Einstein, where he writes articles for InfoGenius, Inc, and overthinks the mythos of his favorite fandoms.

3 Reasons Why It’s a Bad Idea to Buy Site Monitoring from Your Web Host

by Louis Kingston

For baseball pitchers, the two most glorious words in the English language are “perfect game.” For actors, it’s “Oscar win” (forget all that nonsense about how “it’s an honor just to be nominated.”). For school-aged kids, it’s “snow day.” And for businesses, of course, it’s “captive audience.”

Indeed, it doesn’t matter how compelling or clever a marketing and advertising campaign might be. If audiences don’t take notice and pay attention, it may as well not exist. And if you doubt this, think of the last time you sat through 20 minutes of movie trailers — not because you wanted to, but because there was nowhere else to go (at least, not without saying “excuse me…” 10 times as you painfully twisted and squirmed your way past annoyed fellow moviegoers).

Why does this matter? It’s because your web host is singing from the captive audience songbook when it repeatedly urges you to add site monitoring to your existing hosting package. At first glance, this may seem like a good idea. After all, you know that site monitoring is important. Why not just grab it from your web host, the same way you grab a side order of fries from a fast food restaurant? Well here’s why not:

1. Lack of Specialization

Your web host doesn’t specialize in site monitoring, which means they aren’t using the latest technology or hiring the most qualified professionals. Just as you wouldn’t want your doctor to sell you a timeshare during an exam (“You know what might help that bronchitis? Two weeks a year in a sunny and warm Florida condo, as you can see from this lovely brochure”), you don’t want your site monitoring company to do anything but site monitoring. It’s not something anyone should be dabbling in.

2. Lack of Service Offering

When web hosts offer site monitoring, they typically focus on uptime. But site monitoring isn’t just about letting you know when your site goes dark. It’s also about making sure that your site is performing the way it’s supposed to — which means that all elements are functional (e.g. buttons, forms, multi-step processes, etc.), and all pages are loading rapidly. Without this critical information, you may believe that everything with your site is fine and all lights are green; that is, until you begin hearing from irate customers and start losing sales.

3. Potential Conflict of Interest

Last but not least, your site host is supposed to meet an uptime standard as part of their service commitment. But if that same host is also monitoring your site performance, they may be less inclined to be completely transparent if they fall below this standard. And if they did fudge some of the numbers, how would you even know? With this in mind, are we saying that all hosts that offer site monitoring are unethical? Absolutely not. Are we saying that there is an inherent conflict of interest that should be at least concerning and troubling? You bet.

The Simple, Smart Solution

The best (and really, the only) way to solve this problem is to avoid it completely — which means not site monitoring from your host, and instead getting it from a proven, reputable vendor that:

• Specializes in site monitoring — it’s all they do 24/7/365.
• Offers both uptime monitoring and comprehensive performance monitoring — not just the former.
• Has zero conflict of interest telling you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth regarding how your site is doing.

Ready to safeguard and strengthen your business with world-class, surprisingly affordable site monitoring? Then you’re ready for AlertBot! We check all of these boxes, and are trusted by some of the world’s biggest companies. Start your free trial now.

Louis is a writer, author, and avid film fan. He has been writing professionally for tech blogs and local organizations for over a decade. Louis currently resides in Allentown, PA, with his wife and German Shepherd Einstein, where he writes articles for InfoGenius, Inc, and overthinks the mythos of his favorite fandoms.