The previous blog post about our websites being up 99%+ of the time leads to another discussion. We had a prospect who wanted to host with a different outfit. This group guaranteed 100% uptime. We can't guarantee that, so the prospect went with the 100% hosting provider. Why don't we use this '100% uptime' group?
Well, here's the truth: there is No Such Thing as 100% uptime. We was previously that no network is ever up 100% of the time. Network engineers design for '4-nines' uptime: 99.99% or maybe 'five-nines' 99.999% each extra '9' you tack on costs about a factor of 10 more than the previous '9'. Yes, there's several outfits that guarantee '100% uptime', but it's a hallow promise. Their networks really only deliver 99.99% uptime. So how can they guarantee 100%? Simple. They charge about three times as much as we do for hosting and their guarantee states that if your site ever goes down, you get that month's hosting for free. Their business model is to charge so much for hosting that when the inevitable glitch occurs, they have plenty of your money on hand to give you a free month's service. In other words, this is the hosting equivalent of an extended warranty. You pay an awful lot for the occasional service repair. I don't like these outfits because they know, as do I, that the '100%' promise is something they really can't fulfill, but they overcharge as much as they overpromise in order to give you a refund when it's called for. Something about this just rubs me the wrong way.