Every hosting company promises reliability. Not every hosting company is specific about what that promise means or how they intend to keep it. We think you deserve a clear, honest explanation of our uptime commitment - the numbers behind it, the infrastructure that supports it, and what we do when something goes wrong.
What 99.9% Uptime Actually Means
Uptime is expressed as a percentage of total time in a given period. The math on 99.9% looks like this:
- Per day: 1.44 minutes of allowable downtime
- Per month: 43.8 minutes of allowable downtime
- Per year: 8.76 hours of allowable downtime
That last number is the one worth sitting with. 99.9% uptime means your site could technically be down for nearly nine hours over the course of a year and we would still be within our committed threshold.
In practice, we aim to be significantly better than that. Our actual observed uptime across the hosting infrastructure consistently runs above 99.95%. But the 99.9% is what we contractually commit to and will stand behind with service credits.
For context, 99% uptime - a full percentage point lower - allows for over 87 hours of downtime per year. The difference between 99% and 99.9% is not small. Cheap hosts promising "high availability" without stating a specific percentage are often delivering 99% or worse.
How We Deliver It: Canadian Infrastructure
Our servers are housed in Canadian data centres with enterprise-grade physical infrastructure: redundant power with uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems and diesel generators, redundant cooling, and physical security. These are not co-location closets - they are purpose-built facilities designed for continuous operation.
Network redundancy is built in at multiple levels. We peer with multiple upstream providers, which means our connectivity does not depend on a single carrier. If one upstream link degrades, traffic routes automatically through another without interruption.
We do not just wait for something to break. Our monitoring systems check server health, disk status, memory usage, and service availability continuously. Alerts fire immediately when metrics deviate from expected ranges - often before any visitor notices a problem. Our on-call team responds to alerts around the clock.
Keeping Your Data in Canada
For Canadian businesses and organizations, the location of your hosting matters beyond just performance. Data stored on Canadian servers is subject to Canadian law - not the US Patriot Act, not cross-border data sharing agreements, not foreign government access requests that would apply to US-based hosting.
This is particularly relevant for businesses handling personal information governed by PIPEDA or provincial privacy legislation, healthcare organizations, legal firms, and any business whose clients have an expectation of Canadian data residency.
Our infrastructure is 100% Canadian. Your data does not leave Canada.
Scheduled Maintenance and Transparency
Some downtime is planned. We perform scheduled maintenance - hardware upgrades, security patching, network maintenance - during low-traffic windows, typically late at night or early morning. Planned maintenance is announced in advance and does not count against our uptime SLA.
We communicate proactively about both planned maintenance and unexpected incidents. Our status page (status.dotcanada.com) shows real-time service health and historical incident records. If something is wrong, you will know about it from us before you find out from a frustrated customer.
What Happens During an Unplanned Outage
Despite every precaution, things occasionally go wrong. Hardware fails. Software has bugs. The world is imperfect.
When an unplanned outage occurs, here is what happens:
- Automated monitoring detects the problem and alerts our on-call team
- The team begins diagnosing and resolving the issue
- We post a status update within 15 minutes of detection
- We provide ongoing updates until resolution
- After resolution, we post a root cause analysis for significant incidents
If downtime exceeds our SLA thresholds in a given month, affected customers receive service credits automatically - you do not need to ask.
How to Verify Your Own Uptime
We encourage you to monitor your site independently. External uptime monitors give you an objective, third-party view of your availability from multiple geographic locations.
Free tools worth using:
- UptimeRobot - checks your site every five minutes and alerts you by email or SMS when it goes down
- Freshping - similar functionality with a generous free tier
- Better Uptime - more advanced, with incident management features
Set up an external monitor on day one. It protects you regardless of which host you are on, and it gives you the data you need to hold any provider accountable to their uptime promises - including us.
