When buying a web hosting service, before you get down to its detailed hosting features and functions, get an idea about its server's uptime first.

This is the most critical component that determines the life and death of your small business websites. If you focus too much effort in sourcing for a company with good features and functions you need without considering its uptime, then you're putting your online business at risk.

When your small business website goes down without warning, your visitors will directly receive a bad experience up front.

Doing business online is particularly sensitive because your business opening hours depends solely on how reliable the hosting server is. If the company buys in robust servers to house your websites, then your websites are live 24 hours a day during most of the times in a year.

I said "most of the times" because no matter how reliable a server is, the hosting provider will need to upgrade the software or hardware from time to time and then reboot the server to effect the changes. As such, during this reboot, your small business website may not operate normally or may get shut down completely for minutes to hours. But that's normal.

If however, your website goes down few hours, several times a month, then that shows how crappy the web hosting service is because they provide unreliable server for hosting your websites.

So, how do you identify a good hosting uptime? They'll specify on their websites 99.8% or 99.9%. This usually refers to their server uptime.

Some state 100%, but this refers to network uptime, which is simply a gimmick to attract customers. In other words, they don't dare to showcase their server uptime of 99.7% or below, that's why they use network uptime.

Server uptime plays a direct significant role in how well your small business stays "open" on the web. If the server crashes, your website could go down. But a network will rarely go down because it comprises hundreds of computers, peripherals and other hardware, which explains why virtually all web hosting companies can claim a 100% network uptime.

That's why 100% uptime doesn't provide much value to customers. Of course, if they claim their servers support 100% uptime, then this company is likely a crook.

Another way to identify which web hosts provide reliable server uptime is via forums or social networks. Lastly will be your personal test drive on the web host and see if it really lives up to its reputation. Buy its monthly plan first for test drive, then proceed to its yearly plan if it does what it promises.

Want more web hosting tips? Soon Chai shows you more proven strategies in his free web hosting buying guide and helps you find the best web hosting for small businesses that maintains your business websites at maximum uptime, loads your web pages fast, makes you more profits and keeps your operating costs down forever.