For any website, reliable web hosting is incredibly important. It can mean the difference between a frequently returning visitor and one who doesn't bother at all.



Pages often returned as not available can also impact your rating with today's ultra-clever search engines who are also in a race of their own to beat their own competition (other search engines!) after all, a customer returns to good service.

Why is it important to have a reliable web hosting? Your peace of mind is one reason that springs to mind straightaway.

Imagine trying to build your website, to find that every time you go to upload new content or make any changes you can't, because the service is down.

It becomes tedious and frustrating and we are no longer in the early 1990's were that sort of thing was experienced daily.

Consumers are more demanding and won't keep coming back to a website that offers less than perfect service. Whole businesses have been lost because of the same thing, and it's this sort of problem which needs addressing the moment you realize you have it.

When is it critical to have one? It's important anyway, very important unless you have a website you aren't too concerned about people seeing; today's new search engine methods mean that reports are made each time a URL is inaccessible and this can lead to a drop in search engine rankings after so long.

Running a business through your website though makes it critical to have a reliable webhost. You need at least 99.9% uptime, this may seem excessive to you, but in today's modern technology it is perfectly possible to find web hosting businesses that can manage and in some cases even exceed this percentage.

Say your webhost was current providing you with 20% downtime (80% uptime) this could in effect mean you are losing up to 20% of potential customers, who cannot view your site due to this downtime.

This is affecting your earning ability, thus losing you potential revenue. Anyone you employ to help your business, in this case the webhost should not help you LOSE money!

How do I know if my webhost is reliable? You don't, not at first. There are ways though that you can use to find out how likely they are to be reliable, or not.

There are free tools now on the internet which help you monitor up and downtime, and these are becoming more and more popular in the race to be top of the search engines.

More and more people are realizing the importance of server uptime, and these tools can become an invaluable resource if your webhost isn't communicating too well with you.

If you are with a decent webhost then the likelihood is, you'll either receive an email advising you of planned downtime, or there will be a portal on the webhosts website advising of any problems.

Webhosts who hide this sort of information do so for a reason, and that is because they're frightened you'll go elsewhere.