HOSTING
The real cost of website downtime (and how to calculate yours)
Downtime costs more than lost orders — ads keep spending, SEO suffers and customers go elsewhere. Calculate your cost and see how to prevent outages.
By VISIBI Hosting team·Reviewed by Saeed Ak, Co-founder & CTO·Updated 29 September 2026·7 min read
QUICK ANSWER
Downtime costs more than lost orders — ads keep spending, SEO suffers and customers go elsewhere. Calculate your cost and see how to prevent outages.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
✓Lost sales are only part of the cost — wasted ad spend and reputation matter too.
✓Peak days multiply the impact.
✓Most outages are preventable with monitoring, load testing and managed hosting.
FREE CALCULATOR
What does downtime cost you?
Estimated revenue lost per year£1,826
Book a free audit →Simple estimate — peak days can be several times higher.
Common causes
Traffic spikes, failed deployments, expired SSL, database overload, DDoS attacks and third-party failures.
Prevention
Autoscaling hosting, load testing, CI/CD with rollback, 24/7 monitoring, WAF and DDoS protection and a peak-day war room.
Common mistakes to avoid
✕Choosing hosting on price alone
✕Not testing backups until you need them
✕Sizing servers for average traffic instead of peak
✕Leaving SSL, DNS and patching to chance
HOW VISIBI CAN HELP
How we help with hosting
01Right-sizeWe size hosting for your peak traffic and platform.
02Migrate freeZero-downtime migration handled by our engineers.
03ProtectBackups, WAF, patching and monitoring included.
04Support 24/7UK engineers on call when it matters.
Book a free audit →Free · No obligation · Reply within 24 hours
Frequently asked questions
How is downtime cost calculated?
A simple estimate is revenue per hour × hours down × share of sales lost.
What uptime should we expect?
Managed hosting typically targets 99.9%+.
Can you help before Black Friday?
Yes — see Peak Traffic Readiness.
SA
Reviewed by Saeed Ak · Co-founder & CTO25 years engineering high-traffic ecommerce, cloud and security platforms. Written by the VISIBI Hosting team.Meet the team →
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