The true cost of downtime – why 100% uptime is essential

‘The website is down’ is not a cry that any businessperson wants to hear. A non-functioning site can completely paralyse your site, making it incredibly difficult for new customers to buy things or contact you and impossible for existing customers to get stuff done. 99.9% uptime might sound acceptable but that actually means that your website could be down for more than eight hours a year without your host even breaching their service level agreement. In this article, we’ll examine a few of the risks you could be running if you let your website go down and why 100% uptime is essential for any business hoping to compete in 2018.

Reputational damage

Let’s face it, very few of us give companies and websites a second chance. If we’re not able to use a website smoothly and easily, we’ll move on to a competitor and not come back. Every minute that your website is down, you’re sending potential new customers to one of your competitors. You also risk damaging your reputation in your industry and among peers who might recommend you to potential clients. All in all, downtime is a disaster for your reputation and your sales team and you should do everything you can to find a reliable cloud hosting company who will help you to avoid this.

Loss of access to services

This can be even more fatal if you’re running a cloud system that your staff and customers rely on. Any downtime that hits your server could bring your business to a total standstill. You may have to fall back to tedious and time-consuming manual processes or you may find yourself totally unable to function until the server comes back up. Worse still, you’ll probably find yourself dealing with a gaggle of angry customers and stressed out colleagues for days and weeks after the issue is resolved. All in all, you should do everything in your power to stop downtime from impacting your server and cloud infrastructure. It could be even more damaging than a long-term power cut at your office.

Server uptime is a critical factor when you’re choosing a cloud hosting provider that you can trust. Make sure you choose one you know is reliable and has a reputation for 100% uptime. At Clouvider, we have dedicated servers which can guarantee just that. Get in touch to find out more.