If you are running a business oriented website, keeping that website online 24 hours, 7 days a week, 365 days a year is imperative to the financial success of your online business. The web host you choose is responsible for ensuring that your website remains responsive, stable and online all the time.

Many web hosting providers will provide an estimated uptime for their service that is typically quoted as a percentage, if a host states that they have an uptime of 99%, this means that for every 100 hours that your site is hosted with them, your site can be down for up to 1 hour. Your business's website deserves a hosting provider that offers a 99.9% Uptime Guarantee, anything less is unacceptable.

How Does Downtime Affect Your Online Business Bottom Line.

Now 1 hour downtime does not seem like a long time, at some point in time almost everyone has had a website go down for whatever reason for 1 hour, but we need to put this 1 hour downtime into perspective, this 1 hour is in 100 hours. 100 hours is a little over 4 days, could you live with your site being down for 1 hour every 4 days. To expand upon this further, for one year, your website could be offline for up to 3.65 days.

This downtime can obviously become an expensive, you only need to think how much turnover your business does in a day to see that this downtime can cost a significant amount of money. There is also another downside to this, it also has the potential to lose a new customer, a new customer that may never return to your site due to them inevitably looking elsewhere and buying from your competitor while your site is offline.

Consider Your Website's Requirements.

Initially you will need to talk with your website designer and discuss what is exactly required from your hosting provider. You will also need to consider if you need such features as unlimited email accounts, autoresponders, or any other features that you may require. Only after considering all of these different features will you be able to make an informed decision on the hosting account you will purchase.

Shop Around For The Best Deal

It goes without saying that you should shop around for the best possible deal you can find. Regardless of your budget you should not need to spend more money than is necessary to get the job of hosting your website done. But also remember to not box yourself in to a hosting plan that does not allow your site to grow in the pursuit of the almighty dollar. Be sure to allow for a good amount of bandwidth to allow for your sites growth in popularity, also allow for more storage to allow your site to grow as required.