Everyone online is in love with the idea of hosting with a company that maintains an awesome 100% uptime guarantee.
The challenge, however, remains that, more than 99.9 percent of hosting companies do not offer the much elusive 100% uptime guarantee.
Instead, what you see, right, left and center is some poor and often unacceptable 99 (or 99 point something) more than 99.9 percent of the time.
Fewer than .1% of the time do you actually come across a web host that is serious about keeping your website or blog online for as long as you pay them.
These less than .1% of hosting companies, today, bravely offer what the rest of the flock are terribly afraid of even mentioning!
Not only do these hosting companies pledge to make sure that downtime is never your part, they also live up to the huge and extremely demanding expectation.
Today, we’re going to dig out these hosting companies and share them with you.
However, before we proceed to that, let’s figure out what uptime is in the first place (for newbies and folks who are not very conversant with the concept).
After establishing what uptime is, we’ll then explain why it is very important. Right after that, we’ll share the top 2 hosting companies that offer this awesome reality.
Let’s get serious!
What Is Uptime In Web Hosting & Why Is It Very Important?
In the very interesting world of hosting, the time a website or blog is online (and can be accessed accordingly) is referred to as uptime.
Thus, if you can access this very site at the moment, it means that it is ‘up’ – and is experiencing a period that we refer to in the world of hosting as ‘uptime’.
Assuming you could not access the site (and instead, had an error message pop up – or no error message at all), this would mean that the site is down and at the moment, is experiencing what is known in the hosting world as ‘downtime’.
Downtime is the direct opposite of uptime and is something every webmaster learns early in his or her career online to dread.
So, now that we’ve cleared what uptime means (and have also, by converse, cleared the idea of downtime), let’s take a quick look at why keeping a site online – or enjoying the maximum uptime possible is very important.
First, an impressive uptime contributes immensely to keeping your site in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Placement).
This is how it works: when Google and the plethora of search engines crawl your site, they add up what they see to their growing index. It is this index that is fed to would-be visitors when they search for a keyword that you have covered.
Now, when a site is down often, these search engines either have nothing new to add up to their index or develop cold feet sending bots to attempt the crawling process on such a site.
Either way, organic traffic is lost as SERP opportunities are passed and ultimately, no new SERP opportunities are gained.
A truly horrible situation for any webmaster.
Secondly, downtime means loss of income, revenue and reputation.
When someone clicks on a link you shared somewhere or better still, locates your website on the SERPs and sadly, cannot access the site after clicking through, you’ve essentially lost that person to the competition as the back button will be used and another link (most likely, a competitor’s) clicked.
Now, if you’re an online business or an affiliate marketer, imagine what a waste of both traffic and revenue this will amount to!
Finally, downtime means an awful user experience for the persons who are unfortunate to check out what you have to offer!
When someone lands on your site and discovers to his/her dismay that is is offline, the anguish is better imagined than told; especially if such a person is determined to consume the piece of info he or she believed your site contained.
For such a person, the use of the back button is inevitable.
The use of this button ensures that rankings tank on Google and a plethora of other search engines in a manner that is discouraging to say the least.
Now that we’ve explained the evil of downtime, permit us to divert our attention to why the popular 99% uptime (or 99.9%) doesn’t simply cut it.
What Is A Good Uptime Guarantee? (Why 99% Uptime (Or 99.9%) Doesn’t Cut It )
What is a good uptime guarantee? Why does 99 (or 99.9%) fall below the board?
Well, it’s simple, really.
Out of a healthy and ample 100%, 99% appears to be a huge chunk that anyone should be grateful for, at least on surface value.
Well, technically, yes – unless you’re a webmaster or need to do some hosting of any sort.
Mathematically, a year is equals to 8,760 hours.
Now, if someone states that they offer an ‘impressive’ 99% uptime guarantee for their hosting, it means that, they can, technically, put your website offline for 87.6 hours in a single calendar year!
This means that, if such a hosting company were to be really nasty, they can afford to keep your website offline for 14.4 minutes daily!
Or, if they truly want to annoy you, can afford to keep your site offline for 28.8 minutes once every two days.
All these downtime will mean immense loss of traffic, reputation and of course, revenue. Yet, your hosting company will still, technically, be within its self imposed range of 99% uptime – a range you would have already agreed to by signing up in the first place.
But tell us: will such an annoying downtime serve you in both the short and long run?
The answer is obvious and clear for all to see.
Not surprisingly, the scenario with the hosting companies that offer 99.9% uptime guarantee is not anything much different…it is only ‘slightly better’ than the 99% horrific figure we just shared above.
This is why, 99% doesn’t cut it; this is why, 99.9% doesn’t simply fly!
Top 2 Hosting Companies That Offer 100% Uptime Guarantee
Now, having cleared the way, let’s take a look at the top 2 hosting companies that offer an impressive 100% uptime guarantee in the web hosting world.
1. Liquid Web
Liquid Web is one of the providers of the smartest hosting available to the online world today.
Founded in 1997 and still privately held till date, the company has remained true to the founding values that inspired its creation in the first place: the focus on the customer and the all important reality of mixing technology with people to bring out their inherent potential.
However, the inherent focus and direction of the company is just the beginning of its appeal.
Sporting various types of hosting plans, especially the managed hosting variant, this company aims to make things super easy for the client i.e. YOU.
The grand plan is that, without much ado, you’ll get the plan that will fit both your needs and budget and what is more? You’ll also boast of an impressive 100% uptime guarantee.
With this, we’re sure that you’ll sleep easy at night knowing that your site will not follow you to sleep!
Want to take a look at what Liquid Web is offering? Or would you rather check out the smart reasons for considering the company?
How Liquid Web Ensures That Your Site Stays Online 100%
Simply coming up with a vague promise of a 100% uptime guarantee is not a very smart thing to do – especially in this day and time where folks are well informed of what goes and what does not.
In this spirit, Liquid Web shares how it ensures an impressive 100%, stable, uptime guarantee for its teeming clientele.
The company, first and foremost, fashions its power supply in such a manner that power around the data centers never truly shuts down or goes off.
How the company has achieved this is by ensuring that there is redundant power sources so that, even in the worst case scenario of a city-wide power outage, the servers are still up and running by means of backup generators that kick in once such an outage is registered.
Such an alternative power arrangement is called a redundant network by Liquid Web and it does not have just one of such networks; it has an amazing five of them!
However, that is not all…
…Liquid Web, further, has redundant mirrored servers that parallel each other with replicating software.
This works in the following fashion: while your site is hosted on their main, active servers, another separate parallel server runs quietly in the background and mirrors everything on the active server.
In such a scenario, if the active server goes down for any reason, the other server kicks in and you would never notice that such an incident or challenge ever occurred in the first place!
Can you imagine the length Liquid Web is going to ensure that you actively have hosting that is completely fool-proof and one that will be up all the time, no matter what?
Smart Reasons Why You Should Consider Liquid Web Hosting
- Liquid Web does not only blab that it will ensure 100% uptime for your website: it goes a long way to show you how it makes this happen in the real world. In our opinion, this is how a serious hosting company should operate.
- Liquid Web has an impressive 59 seconds support guarantee! Now, that is something to take serious too (in case you ever need help).
- The company has data centers across both the US and Europe. If latency is your challenge, then, you need to take a chill pill here. Wherever your visitors are, your site will open up fast enough for them.
- Liquid Web, impressively, offers managed hosting. With this arrangement, you are certain to spare your time for better things even if you’re hyper busy. Or, are new to the reality of hosting sites online.
- The company has unique solutions for freelancers, agencies, business owners and resellers. Wherever you fall thus, you’re covered in the best possible manner.
- Finally, The National Geographic, Motorola, FILA, FedEx, Bic and a plethora of other internationally renowned companies are hosted here. If all these companies trust Liquid Web and importantly, are very comfortable with the services the company renders, go figure 🙂
Enough of the talk. If staying online 100% of the time is very important to you (and the very thought of going offline strikes shivers in your spine), then, you should consider checking out Liquid Web Hosting.
Immediately.
MORE: 4 Best Hosting Companies That Offer Free SSL Certificates
2. DreamHost
The very second option we have on our list here is DreamHost Hosting – the hosting company that prides itself in hosting your dreams online.
Like everything related to dreams, the company has lofty ideals – and is determined to make such ideals come true for you, primarily via the assurance that your dreams remain online even when you go to sleep.
Founded in 1996 right in the US, the company has been online long enough to know what it is doing: and, sincerely, we believe that it has also got this right.
This is evident in the fact that the company comes out (from hundred others) and dare says it can offer what the rest aren’t offering: an impressive 100% guarantee.
However, that is just one of the things that make the company so seductive and attractive in the first place.
The other things are simple – but also make the difference between awesome and horrible:
- A fair price on the hosting plans.
- Independently owned.
- Plans that are meant to fit a variety of clients and budgets and
- A passion for privacy and its protection online.
Are these not options that should make you consider ‘the dream option‘?
How Dream Host Ensures That Your Site Stays Online 100%
DreamHost ensures that the software that powers both its systems and the ones that power your site are both at their newest and latest.
With such a configuration, the chances of software failures are minimized to the very barest.
On the hardware part, the company also ensures that its hardware are of the latest and most reliable models – since the bulk of the failures that result in downtime come from old hardware over staying their use.
Power-wise, the company powers its data station from electricity, got strictly from renewable means.
With such an arrangement in place, it is worth noting that, the chances of power failure are almost zero to being completely non-existent.
However, in the rare event that there is a challenge (maybe, an unforeseeable event or an act of God), the company has a very customer friendly ‘fine print’ in its terms of service:
DreamHost guarantees 100% uptime. A failure to provide 100% uptime will result in customer compensation pursuant to guidelines established herein.
Customer is entitled to compensation if Customer’s web site, databases, email, FTP, SSH or webmail become unusable as a result of failure(s) in DreamHost systems for reasons other than previously announced scheduled maintenance, coding or configuration errors on the part of the Customer.
Customer will receive DreamHost credit equal to the Customer’s current hosting cost for 1 (one) day of service for each 1 (one) hour (or fraction thereof) of service interruption, up to a maximum of 10% of customer’s next pre-paid hosting renewal fee.
DreamHost’s assessment of downtime begins when Customer opens a support ticket to report the problem.
See how a serious hosting company with the needs of its clients at heart operates?
Smart Reasons Why You Should Consider DreamHost Hosting
- The company offers hosting solutions that are affordable and customer friendly. If you’re starting out or are on a budget, there are very few options that beat this.
- DreamHost is an old and very reliable hosting company. As a matter of fact, it remains one of the very oldest hosting options available to customers today.
- This company is privately held till date. Accordingly, its founding virtues of privacy and putting the customer first are still sacrosanct to its management.
- DreamHost offers 24/7 support.
- Finally, there is the very obvious one: the company promises an impressive 100% uptime guarantee – a promise we have seen first hand that the company takes very seriously.
Now that you’ve seen what DreamHost offers, would you rather host with it or try the very first option, Liquid Web?
MORE: Top 5 Best SiteGround Alternatives Ranked
Honorable Mentions
These are the two smartest web hosting options that sport the coveted 100% uptime guarantee, today.
However, there are other hosting options that are without this guarantee but, in an awesome way, have an impressive and super awesome uptime reality.
These options, during a good year, record no downtime whatsoever!
What this means is simple: though, theoretically, not assuring you of 100% uptime, it is not uncommon for the two companies listed below here to return an uptime level, for some calendar years, that is exactly 100%.
These options are:
1. A2 Hosting
A2 hosting is the undisputed king of turbo, super fast servers.
Boosting speeds that other web hosting providers can only dream of, this hosting company is truly the dream of every web master.
Why, you may ask?
Simple: sites hosted on A2 are 20X faster than those hosted on the servers of the competition!
Simple. Short. End of story.
Officially, the company states on its homepage that it offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee.
However, our experience in the past year has been that, for the whole calendar year, we never witnessed any downtime whatsoever!
For the past years, our experience was that, we had a slight downtime that lasted for under 3 minutes. Now, we’re talking 3 minutes for period that spans healthy years!
2. SiteGround
SiteGround has remained a wonder in the hosting world for good reason: the company was the very first to take customers very seriously by ensuring that they are properly attended to – and on time.
It is also the only company with managed hosting offers that are super affordable for even beginners – at least for the first year.
The company is also one of the very few hosting companies that also take your website security super seriously – and our guess is that, they take this more seriously than you do 🙂
Officially, SiteGround has an impressive uptime guarantee of 99.99%!
However, our experience, hosting with the company for the past 3 years is that, we have never witnessed any downtime at all!
This is because, the company deploys its own solutions, developed in-house to stay afloat when other hosting companies sink in the sea of downtime.
These solutions, being custom made, work so brilliantly that it is impossible not to see an increased uptime assurance and reality.
For instance, its Linux Containers deployment, its proactive server monitoring, its automatic backup systems and importantly, its secure account isolation all mean that, even the basic shared hosting options have the power and uptime assurance that is only typical with VPS or dedicated options (elsewhere).
SiteGround is truly awesome 🙂
However, do not take our word for it: head over to the company directly and see these things for yourself.
MORE: 5 Dead Sure Signs It’s Time To Fire Your Current Web Host!
Wrap Up On The 100% Uptime Reality
The sad truth is that, many sites today do not need any special 100% uptime.
As a matter of fact, they could use a miserable 50% uptime or even less!
However, if you’re creating a very special site, have a very special message or are always up for the very best, no matter what, you can’t get any options better than the special four mentioned above.
As a matter of fact, no uptime guarantees in the industry are better, in reality, than these four chronicled here in this article.
If you are thus uptime serious, your choice will need to come from these.
If you’re not, then, any other choice (from the plethora available in the hosting world today), will serve you just awesome 🙂
Ultimately, the choice remains yours!