Website Monitoring Services: Who

Is Keeping Your Web Host In

Check?

When you signed up for the hosting package for your website,

you were probably promised something like 99.9 percent

uptime. The question is, how do you really know whether or not

your hosting company is actually delivering on that promise?

While nearly everyone realizes the significance of downtime

and the impact it can have on ecommerce profits, not everyone

knows how to keep an eye on the uptime their hosting service is

providing and how to minimize downtime and profit loss due to

downtime.

What That Uptime Guarantee Really Means

First things first… Let’s take a close look at that uptime

guarantee your hosting provider quoted when you signed up for

hosting service. Let’s say the uptime rate promised to you was

99.9 percent. There are a few things you need to know about

this “guarantee”. First and foremost, this only covers unplanned

downtime. If your site goes down due to planned server

maintenance or upgrades, it is not covered in the 99.9 percent

promise. Furthermore, when it comes to collecting damages for

any downtime that exceeds what you were promised, you can

only collect the actual cost of what you paid the hosting

provider for that amount of time.

For example, if your hosting provider promised you 99.9

percent uptime but only provided 98.9 percent uptime, the

hourly difference in that uptime divided by what you pay your

web host each month is the only monetary compensation you

will be entitled to. No hosting provider offers to pay for lost

sales or other damages due to excessive downtime, which is

why it is important to utilize a website monitoring service to

ensure that your web host remains on the ball in terms of

keeping your site up and running.

How Your Website Monitoring Service Keeps Your Hosting

Provider in Check

If your hosting provider is dropping the ball, chances are they

aren’t going to tell you about it. You may or may not become

aware of an increase in downtime if you don’t have website

monitoring service in place to monitor exactly how much

downtime your site is experiencing. Furthermore, without

website monitoring service in place, you have no way of

knowing if your site is experiencing performance issues in

addition to downtime issues.

When you utilize the services of a quality website monitoring

service, you will be made aware of issues with downtime and

performance and will be able to determine what is causing the

issues. If it is indeed the service of your hosting provider that is

lacking, you may simply need to upgrade your hosting plan or

you may need to change hosting providers altogether.

Knowing Who to Trust

Since website downtime and performance issues are the two

biggest threats to an ecommerce business, you want to make

sure you have those two things under control. Since you cannot

possibly monitor your site manually 24 hours a day, 7 days a

week, 365 days a year, you need to partner with a service that

can. That means investing in quality website monitoring service

to keep an eye on your site and ensure that your hosting provider

is keeping up their end of the uptime deal. When it comes to

website performance issues and website downtime, you need to

be the first to know when it happens to your site and why it is

happening. The only way you can ensure this is by

implementing a website monitoring service as a part of your

critical business operations.

Alertra is a leading provider of website monitoring and alerting

services. We monitor the availability and performance of

Internet-connected devices. As part of Alertra website

monitoring service, we provide timely alert notifications and

access to detailed reporting. We offer monitoring service to all

sizes of businesses right from small businesses to Fortune 500

companies.