All web hosting companies promise they will be up and running at least at 99.99% of the time. Why? They have to. Any number less than that looks like they will fail when the times comes. However, in all honesty and in all fairness, it’s impossible to promise something you really have little or no control over.
A company can legitimately offer an uptime guarantee under two basic situations: one is that they have invested in their own onsite technology that allows them to minimize events that would cause any downtime, and the second is to offer “consideration” in exchange for downtime. In other words, some companies are well aware that no matter what they do, something can happen to overshadow their best technological stops. In the event of an outage, you may be able to get a month free or get reimbursed for lost sales (depending on your contract).
In any event, there are many companies out there that do offer very reasonable hosting packages in exchange for promises of 99.99% and even 100% guarantees of uptime. Keep in mind, however, that for a reputable company to make these claims, they most probably have spent some very serious cash on putting stop gaps in place that would allow them to reasonably make these claims.
When you find a company online that does make this promise, and they are offering package prices that look too good to be true (such as $ 1.99 a month for unlimited storage), it’s a good idea to try to find out how they can make that offer and what they will do for you in the event their server (your website) does go down.
Having a guarantee means nothing if there isn’t a clear understanding of both sides of the agreement. For instance, you find a company that has a pretty good price and they offer 99.99% uptime. That’s nice, but what happens if they crash? Do they simply tell you it was an act of God (even though the owner’s new puppy mistook your server for his personal fire hydrant)?
There are many fairly priced packages offered by an equal number of web hosting companies. Just keep in mind that you get what you pay for – no matter what you are buying. Unless you are taking advantage of a limited time special offer, be careful about signing on with a company that may not be able to keep its own end of the bargain.
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