Is There Such A Thing As 100% Uptime?

Searching for a web host service provider that is capable of providing 100% uptime is like finding a needle in a haystack. It will be an endless quest that is often the root of frustration for website owners. While keeping your website up and running is essential to regularly drive traffic to your website, 100% uptime is not guaranteed and may even be impossible to achieve. Here's why:

During the selection process, many hosting sites will offer 98.9% or 99.9% uptime. It is quite rare for hosting companies to provide 100% server uptime. 99.9% uptime seems like a great deal, if you are under the impression that 0.01% is not really a big deal. However, there are instances that in spite of the site being reachable, it does not necessarily mean it works perfectly fine. Even a guarantee of 99.99% uptime does not assure you that your website will be functioning properly all the time.

A web host service provider that can provide 100% uptime is definitely the creme de la creme of all web hosting companies. Unfortunately, not all downtime is counted. This means that 99%, 99.9% and 99.99% are acceptable uptime rates.

Uptime: The Big Picture

Without doing the number crunching, the uptime rates may seem harmless to your website, but when they are translated into hours and minutes, you will realise that you need to be keen on selecting a web host service provider.

  1. 99% uptime means your site will experience outage or downtime for 432 minutes per month. This means your website will experience downtime for more than 7 hours.

  2. 99.9% uptime is equivalent to 45 minutes of downtime. A website may experience hardware failure per month.

  3. 99.99% translates to 5 minutes of downtime per month. However, it will be difficult for website owners to find a provider that guarantees 99.99% and 100% uptime.

Since there are hosts that measure downtime over a quarter or a year, good service will soon outweigh a big outage.  The type of web host service provider you choose will also depend on the rate of downtime you can tolerate.

The downtime that does not count are user error, server maintenance and some rules that the host may have. It is also important to note that in the world of web hosting, resources are limited. If your business is not a common one, some sites may share the same hosting hardware with you. This can result in a server overload. With broken transactions and high loading times, user experience will definitely be affected. Since 100% uptime is not easily attainable, it is necessary to detect problems quickly through application monitoring.

Still have questions? Our sales team are available to answer any questions you may have.

Contact Sales Team
Star Star Star Star Star

Trusted by thousands of Aussies

We have thousands of customers from around Australia who trust us to host their websites everyday.

See more reviews on independant review site Serchen

Review Person

Relentless Hosting has done a great job hosting my many client sites. They answer my support queries quickly and are very helpful. Highly Recommended

Review Person

Excellent service from the team at all hours... Made our transition from other hosting site very quick, easy and ACCURATE, no transition issues at all.