Why Website Monitoring Services Are More Relevant Than Ever

You would think with the accelerated advances in technology and our increased dependence on the World Wide Web, website downtime would have become a thing of the past. Unfortunately, this not the case. While customers expect 100 percent uptime, downtime is still a very real issue, making website monitoring service more important than ever. Even if you do everything within your power to avoid website downtime and keep your site up and available, there are factors at play that are beyond your control. This is why website monitoring service is a must for any company that conducts business via the web.

What 2013 Showed Us and What Hasn't Changed

Even though technology has indeed advanced and many hosting companies tout higher uptime rates than ever, the fact of the matter is that downtime is still a very prevalent issue in today's ecommerce world. In 2013 we saw many instances of this fact, especially on August 2nd when a Utah data center that supports some of the industry's most popular hosting brands suffered an extensive outage. The hardware failure, which affected popular hosting services such as HostGator, HostMonster, and BlueHost, resulted in thousands of websites going offline for an extended period of time. This is an example of how your site can go down due to no fault of your own, but can disrupt your business and hit your profits nonetheless.

Even Something as Simple as a Power Outage Still Causes Downtime

Website owners who do not utilize website monitoring service put their business at continued risk. When your website goes down, you need to know about it the moment it happens. Every minute your site is down without your knowledge equates to time lost fixing the problem and lost profits. When something as simple as a power outage can cause downtime, it becomes obvious your site is at risk no matter how vigilant you may be about keeping your site up and running on your end.

In March of 2013, a power outage in Irvine, California resulted in failed power systems at DreamHost's data center. This single incident caused more than 350,000 DreamHost customers to experience a period of downtime that spanned across two days. Those who did not know of the outage lost untold profits while those who did not have failsafe plans in place had to roll with the punches. Companies that utilized website monitoring services, however, and had failsafe plans in place (such as back-up hosting) were able to avoid most of the damage that other companies experienced due to the DreamHost outage.

The Problem Isn't Going Away

As 2013 showed us numerous instances of the fact that website downtime definitely is not a thing of the past, and this trend has continued throughout 2014, more and more businesses have realized the need for website monitoring service. The fact of the matter is, your site will indeed go down at one point or another. The question is, how soon will you find out about it so you can take matters into your own hands to mitigate your losses. The answer to that question can be answered by whether or not you have website monitoring in place. With a website monitoring service keeping a vigilant eye on your site's uptime, you know you will be notified the moment website downtime occurs. Without it, you leave everything up to chance.

Alertra is a leading provider of website monitoring and alerting services. We monitoring service uptime and check availability and performance of Internet-connected devices.