Is Your Shared Hosting Plan Creating Website Downtime?

When you first decide to invest in a hosting plan for your website, shared hosting options are often the most cost-effective solutions out there. That is why so many business owners opt for a shared hosting plan when it comes to the hosting plan they choose for their site. There are, however, things that you need to consider when you choose a shared hosting plan over a dedicated hosting plan, such as how that shared plan is going to affect your website downtime and how a quality website monitoring service can help you assess whether or not your shared plan is keeping up with the needs of your site.

1. Are Other Sites Affecting Your Site's Performance?

When you choose a shared hosting plan for your website, you may not realize that other sites that are hosted on your shared server can affect the performance and even the uptime of your website. A shared server only has so many resources to go around. If the demands of another site on that server causes the server to crash, your site is going to experience downtime through no fault of your own. Unfortunately, the reason for the downtime really won't concern your customers as much as the fact that they cannot access your site where and when they want to. If you are on a shared hosting plan, you need the services of a quality website monitor to ensure that other sites on your shared server are not affecting your own site's performance.

2. Even Small Percentages Can Have a Big Impact

When shopping for a hosting plan, you likely don't only shop based on whether or not the plan is a shared one. The uptime statistics that are published by the hosting provider are likely another factor you take into consideration. What you need to remember is that even a fraction of a percentage can mean a big difference in profit loss when it comes to website downtime. For example, an uptime rate of 99.8 percent actually has double the downtime of a site that offers 99.9 percent.While 99.9 percent uptime means 9 hours of downtime per year, 99.8 percent equals 17 hours of downtime per year. Pay close attention to the numbers advertised because even if you can save a few bucks on hosting fees with a plan that offers 99.8 percent versus the price of a company that offers 99.9 percent uptime, you'll likely lost more profits than you save in hosting fees when you consider the added downtime your site will experience.Another problem is that the uptime advertised is an overall percentage. Your server may have more downtime than others if the sites on that server are sucking up the server's resources, leaving your site in the lurch. So while your hosting company's overall uptime rate may indeed be 99.9 percent, you may only experience 99.7 percent uptime if the other sites on your shared server are affecting your site's downtime.

3. Website Monitoring Services Can See if You're Actually Getting that Promised Uptime

So you find the perfect hosting plan and it offers 99.9 percent uptime. How do you know that you're actually getting that uptime you've been promised? This is where website monitoring services come into play. With a quality website monitor keeping a vigilant eye on your site, you will know the moment it goes down and how long the site is down for. You can then do the math to determine whether or not you are actually getting that uptime rate of 99.9 percent, or if you need to consider moving your hosting service to another provider or even a dedicated hosting plan.