When you are going to pay for web hosting service you should make sure that the hosting company has potential to keep your website accessible for most of the time. The only way how to avoid troubles caused by downtime is checking web hosting company uptime before you buy the hosting plan. In this article, I am going to explain how to do that most effectively.

Basically, there are two ways how to monitor the web hosting uptime. You can use either desktop application or some of many online monitoring services. Both solutions have some pros and some cons. What is the difference?

Using online service is the easiest way. You can find some websites offering uptime stats in google. The advantage of this solution is the possibility to see statistics for many months or maybe years back. The time period depends only on the date when the web host begun to be monitored. When you come across uptime monitoring services you will probably notice slightly different results. The reason of such difference can be another checking interval. While some websites check the web hosting uptime every 5 minutes, there are others which do the same in 60 minutes interval. If the webiste is checked only once every 60 minutes it is possible there was some downtimes between the checkings which was not detected. From this reason I suggest to take some time and find a service with lower checking intervals.

You will probably find out that these intervals are a little longer than you prefer. The good solution may be to download some free monitoring software which can be run on your desktop. This way you have all settings including the intervals under your control. Set one minute intervals and add URL of web hosts you are going to compare. The disadvantage of this method is the impossibility to get data for a long period of the time (I expect you will not wait full year before you sign up with some hosting company). On the other side the most recent uptime is more important than one year old stats because many companies may get new owner, rapidly increase their clients base and add more servers. These factors can impact their uptime.

If the company you are checking runs more servers try to monitore more of them. While the main website with the presentation of the hosting provider can be always up there may be some clients websites hosted on another servers with suffering by downtime.

So if you want to have most reliable uptime stats as possible you should combine these two methods. Make some online research across the online monitoring services and install a software to monitor the servers yourself. Then count some averages and also take into account another important factors regarding web hosting company reliability -- if the web host provide 24/7 customer support, how much web space and data transfer they offer and search for overall reputation of the provider around the webmaster forums and review sites. Make also sure that the web host you are going to host with offers money back guarantee or trial period. Even the best companies are not suitable for every website. Every webmaster has some special needs and you should make sure that you will not loose any money if you pick a host which does not fully comply with your requirements.