How Much Does Just 1 Hour Of It Cost Your Business?

Applications, both mobile and web-based, are growing increasingly popular. Many individuals and companies alike use them for a wide range of things. In fact, there are hundreds of billions of apps downloaded every year, and that’s not even counting all of the web apps being used frequently.

Many of these apps are used millions of times every single day and are a significant part of most people’s lives. However, while it would be great if these apps always worked, this isn’t the case. Every now and then many apps will suffer from downtime, a period of time where no one can access or use the app. This can happen for a variety of reasons from unexpected errors, code problems, hardware or software errors and even human error.

Not only is downtime annoying for yourself and your company (as well as your users), but it can also cost you a lot of money. But just how much can a single hour of downtime cost your business?

How Much Does Just 1 Hour Of It Cost Your Business?

As you know, downtime can be a huge issue for many companies and can lead to a huge dip in the public opinion about your app. But in addition to that, this downtime will almost certainly cost you a pretty penny. In fact, it is believed that a single hour of downtime costs businesses (on average) around $300,000. That is thousands and thousands of dollars every single minute.

Of course, the actual amount that downtime will cost you will depend on the size of your business or the audience of your app.An app with a small audience to begin with might not feel the same effects of downtime that a huge app with millions of users will.

It is all relative to how much you are used to making. While downtime gets all of the headlines, there are also brief interruptions that many apps will experience that can also cost a decent amount of money.

Because of these high costs, it is incredibly important to do all you can to prevent or limit downtime as best as possible. But how do you go about doing that? Well, there are a few different things that can help limit downtime, and we’ll go over them now.

Utilize Monitoring Tools

All downtime is caused by some sort of mistake, error or other issues. Without monitoring your logs and other systems, you may be unaware an error has taken place until it’s too late. However, if you are using automatic app monitoring tools, such as the ones offered by AppOptics, it can help in a big way. These tools are able to identify errors as soon as they occur, as well as track other performance metrics.

If you know about an error as soon as it occurs, you will be able to identify and fix it quickly. Hopefully this will allow the issue to be stifled before it ever affects the end user with downtime.

Without these tools, you simply won’t be notified as soon as an error occurs and trying to find it, let alone fix it, could take a lot of time. Using monitoring tools is simply a more safe, efficient and streamlined way to limit downtime.

Ensure Everyone is Properly Trained

As mentioned earlier, human error is a leading cause of downtime. People make mistakes and while these are sometimes small in size, other mistakes can be massive and can affect the company in huge ways.

As a result, you need to do all you can to limit these mistakes, and the way to do that is train everyone properly. Everyone you hire needs to be able to do correctly use the hardware and software they need to do their jobs.

If not, the chances of errors goes way up. However, it is important to remember that training shouldn’t always be a one-time thing. People should brush up on certain skills frequently to ensure it is still fresh.

Also, if an update changes something about how software or hardware operates, be sure ensure all employees know. Of course, people are never perfect, but adequately training them is a good way to limit the mistakes they make,

Have a Recovery Plan

As much as you plan for downtime to never occur, it’s impossible to prevent it all of the time. Instead of spending all of your time trying to stop it, be sure to also take time to create a plan for how you plan to recover from downtime if it does indeed occur. In business, it is a good idea to be proactive, not reactive, in these situations.

Ensure that everyone knows the plan and their role in the recovery plan, so there is no confusion. Remember, depending on your app, every minute or hour of downtime is incredibly important. So the quicker you can put your recovery plan into action, the sooner the downtime will end.

In conclusion, hopefully this blog post has been able to help you learn about app downtime, how much it costs and some things you can do to limit it.

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