By Ricardo d Argence

Even given the large number of web hosting companies out there, it's a lot harder to find a reliable web host than you may have thought. The competition is intense and there are plenty of hosting companies and resellers, all claiming to offer 99% or greater uptime.

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.

If your site is frequently unavailable, this can also negatively affect your site's ranking with the search engines. Search engines rank sites in order of relevance to a given topic and by their perceived importance to users - and after all, how valuable of a resource can a website be if it's always out of service?

Reliable webhosting matters to your visitors, to the search engines and to you, if you like having peace of mind, that is.

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.

You have every right to expect better performance from your web host and of course, visitors will expect your site to be there when they try to visit. There has been more than one online business which has failed because of unreliable web hosting. Once you see problems with your hosting services, do something about it - the longer you wait, the more business you could be losing!

If your website is strictly for your personal use and it doesn't matter too much to you if anyone else can access it, then you might not be too concerned with reliable webhosting. However, it's a critical factor for every other site out there.

Business oriented sites simply cannot survive without reliable web hosting. While all of the hosting companies promise 99% and uptime, you should look for hosting which promises (and more importantly, delivers) 99.9% or better uptime. It's possible and there are hosts who can do this. The technology is there, but not every host can provide it.

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.

The lower your uptime, the more money you could be losing - it's just that simple. Your webhost is supposed to help your business make, not lose money.

So how can you tell if a webhost is reliable? The short answer is you really can't until you try their service for yourself. However, there are a few things you can do to help you assess if they may be reliable enough to trust with your website.

There are free tools which can monitor uptime, something every webmaster should have. If you have a site, uptime matters. Being able to monitor this all-important performance benchmark for yourself instead of relying on the hosting company to provide it is valuable.

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.

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