No matter how big or small the website is, maintaining good uptime and server performance is important for online businesses to generate revenues. These two are the key measures that determines how well the website is functioning for end user activity. When there is a frequent disruption in website activity and is not reliably available for customer usage, customers get frustrated and may stop visiting those sites subsequently. The losses incurred during planned downtimes are minimal because they are generally scheduled during off peak hours. However, unplanned downtimes are crucial because the site owners cannot expect when the instance is going to occur exactly. Analyzing the cause also becomes difficult as it may happen for any reason, could be the server problem or power outage.
What is Website Uptime ?
A website uptime is defined as the measure of website availability without downtimes, that means the rate at which the website is available to the users without any disruption. Most often, website owners depend on the hosting providers to determine site uptime and track its performance. In fact, hosting services offer 100% uptime rate to their customer websites, but in reality they rarely deliver promised uptime due to some inefficiencies.
Also when considering uptime, it is not just the availability of website but the performance also matters. Unfortunately, many hosting companies consider site availability for uptime calculation rather than its performance and functionality. Sometimes, the site may be up but may have issues with page loads or functionality. This situation is more problematic than downtimes because site owners may not even know about the issue until they are informed by other sources. Hence, it is not a good idea to depend on hosting companies for keeping a check on website uptimes. Site owners need a reliable service such as website monitoring services which can monitor and provide reports on server & network performance as well as site uptime issues.
Best Method to Track Website Uptime
While relying on hosting provider for tracking uptime is not sensible, checking the website availability for 24 hours manually is impractical. It is unfeasible for website owners to track each component and check the status of their websites manually for performance and functionality. The best choice for site owners is to have a real-time tracking using a good website monitoring services that can monitor their websites for downtime and other key parameters that indicate performance deterioration. It is efficient method to track uptime monitoring as it provides continuous tracking as well as constant access to live data about parameters that indicate website performance situation. Any instances of downtime or performance degradation will be instantly alerted to the website owners, so it enables appropriate action immediately and reduces the downtime duration.