What is an uptime? It simply means the total number of time for which a web hosting server can stay online without disruption. The truth is that an uptime of hundred percent is not possible no matter how advance the hosting firm's equipments and infrastructures might be.

These days, major website hosting firms claim that they provide an uptime of no les than ninety percent amongst their stiff competitors in the hosting industry. Nevertheless, you should be a wise user. Don't get caught up easily and that is why you need to verify these claims carefully. That should help you validate their consistency.

Downtime can come in two major ways:

A downtime that is planned which simply means that is scheduled periodically. The purpose of this plan is to maintain the service and to fix bugs and patches for security purposes. Such a downtime cannot be avoided and is not a part of the promised hosting firms would give you.

A downtime that is not planned and can bring disastrous upshots to users at the other end. This form of downtime normally appears as a result of unforeseen occurrences. They cannot be controlled by the technical team when they strike.

Definitely, it is vital that a server tries to stay online for long. But what are the gains to be derived?

Your website is a vital marketing tool. Hence, the uptime of your server is the key to keeping you website fully running and operational. Of what use is it when your hosting firm's server is down. In this case, your business would eventually decline and most users won't be able to access your website at the particular time.

The company offering the website hosting also need to make sure that the uptime is continuous. And there should be no disruption; it should be kept to the nearest minimum. This will give it an edge over other competitors. Just a second of downtime can pose adverse effects for your business online. This is because there were thousands of visitors at that moment that couldn't get through. You have invariably lost thousands of bucks too.

Uptime is vital for large organizations or business. But it doesn't end there. They play a vital role in operation of personal businesses too. An interruption in uptime that isn't expected might go a long way to hamper the turning in of products. Additionally, vital communication might get shortened if a downtime happens unnecessarily.

If a downtime happens for more than two times, existing customers would have no choice than to look somewhere else in a bid to get better reliability. Furthermore, it cannot be guaranteed that these customers would return to the same host after such incidents.

If a downtime happens frequently, it would no doubt destroy the image of that hosting firm. Customers that have withdrawn would no longer be ready to vouch for such a host. They can even go a long way to discourage their relatives, business partners and friends from signing up with that particular host.

Recently, almost all hosting firms offer potential clients an SLA (a kind of agreement). In this agreement, compensation is included. If the hosting firm fails to deliver good service, the clients can then claim the compensation without a fuss.