Netcraft measures and makes available the response times of around forty leading hosting providers' sites. The performance measurements are made at fifteen minute intervals from separate points around the internet, and averages are calculated over the immediately preceding 24 hour period.

From a customer's point of view, the percentage of failed requests is more pertinent than outages on hosting companies' own sites, as this gives a pointer to reliability of routing, and this is why we choose to rank our table by fewest failed requests, rather than shortest periods of outage. In the event the number of failed requests are equal then sites are ranked by average connection times.

Information on the measurement process and current measurements is available.

Rackspace had the most reliable hosting company site in October, responding to each and every one of Netcraft's requests throughout the month. Rackspace also had the most reliable site in April, despite failing to respond to two requests that month.

Rackspace provides managed and cloud hosting from nine datacentres in the US, UK and Hong Kong. The company is well known for the "Fanatical Support" it offers to its customers, including those who have chosen to move to other hosting companies. Rackspace serves its own website from an F5 BIG-IP device.

Kattare Internet Services also responded to all requests, but had a slower average connection time than Rackspace. Kattare's primary focus is on Java hosting – using Tomcat with private Java virtual machines – but also hosts PHP, Ruby, Perl and Python applications on shared hosting, managed servers and collocated machines in Corvallis, Oregon.

Seven of October's top ten hosting company websites used Linux, while the other three used FreeBSD, Windows Server 2008 and F5 BIG-IP.

Netcraft measures and makes available the response times of around forty leading hosting providers' sites. The performance measurements are made at fifteen minute intervals from separate points around the internet, and averages are calculated over the immediately preceding 24 hour period.

From a customer's point of view, the percentage of failed requests is more pertinent than outages on hosting companies' own sites, as this gives a pointer to reliability of routing, and this is why we choose to rank our table by fewest failed requests, rather than shortest periods of outage. In the event the number of failed requests are equal then sites are ranked by average connection times.

Information on the measurement process and current measurements is available.

Datapipe was the most reliable hosting company in September, giving it an impressive six victories so far this year. Note that the top four hosting companies had the same number of failed requests, so they have been sorted by average connection time.

During September, Datapipe augmented its range of hosting services by announcing the public availability of the first PCI DSS 2.0 Level 1 Service Provider certified cloud computing platform, and also partnered with Alert Logic to release a fully managed advanced network security solution for Amazon Web Services. Next month, Datapipe will be sending a four person team from their Hong Kong team to run 100km in the Oxfam Trailwalker.

In second place was Swishmail. Primarily an email provider, the company also offers several managed web hosting plans. Both Datapipe and Swishmail run their company websites on FreeBSD, which was used by half of the top ten hosting companies in the previous month.

Not far behind in third place, ServInt offers managed dedicated servers and scalable virtual private servers. Founded in Northern Virginia in 1995, over 25% of its employees have served for more than 10 years.

Fourth-place Aruba is an Italian hosting company, whose parent group operates several offices and data centres across Europe. Aruba offers Windows and Linux hosting solutions, some of which have 'unlimited' disk space and traffic.

Four of September's top ten hosting company websites used Linux, while three used FreeBSD, two used Windows Server 2008 and one used Windows Server 2003.

Netcraft measures and makes available the response times of around forty leading hosting providers' sites. The performance measurements are made at fifteen minute intervals from separate points around the internet, and averages are calculated over the immediately preceding 24 hour period.

From a customer's point of view, the percentage of failed requests is more pertinent than outages on hosting companies' own sites, as this gives a pointer to reliability of routing, and this is why we choose to rank our table by fewest failed requests, rather than shortest periods of outage. In the event the number of failed requests are equal then sites are ranked by average connection times.

Information on the measurement process and current measurements is available.

Both of the top two hosting companies had the same number of failed requests this month and they are therefore ranked by average connection time.

After slipping to third last month, the top spot was regained by Datapipe in August. They offer a range of services including managed hosting, compliance, security and cloud computing. Datapipe have recently expanded their UK datacenters.

In second place this month is iWeb Technologies, a Canadian hosting company based in Montreal. iWeb Technologies provide web hosting, dedicated servers, managed hosting and colocation to customers from around the world. They have recently launched a new product range, Smart Servers, which aim to give the benefits of both virtualization in the cloud and dedicated hardware.

Swishmail come in at third place this month, who offer a variety of managed web hosting plans in addition to their core service of enterprise-grade email hosting.

For the first time this year, FreeBSD has the largest share of hosting providers in the top 10 with half of them running FreeBSD servers. Of the other hosting providers in the top 10, 4 run Linux and 1 uses Windows Server 2008.

Netcraft measures and makes available the response times of around forty leading hosting providers' sites. The performance measurements are made at fifteen minute intervals from separate points around the internet, and averages are calculated over the immediately preceding 24 hour period.

From a customer's point of view, the percentage of failed requests is more pertinent than outages on hosting companies' own sites, as this gives a pointer to reliability of routing, and this is why we choose to rank our table by fewest failed requests, rather than shortest periods of outage. In the event the number of failed requests are equal then sites are ranked by average connection times.

Information on the measurement process and current measurements is available.

Both of the top two hosting companies had the same number of failed requests this month and they are therefore ranked by average connection time.

Top of the table this month is Hosting 4 Less. The company guarantees 99.9% uptime, with its own OC48 Sonet Ring connecting their secure data center to the internet. Hosting 4 Less has been running since 1998. They offer both Linux and Windows hosting as well as e-commerce hosting.

The second most reliable hosting company for July was PoundHost who are based in the UK and offer a range of hosting solutions, including dedicated servers, co-location and virtual hosting.

Third this month was Datapipe, which offers a range of services including managed hosting, compliance, security and cloud computing. Datapipe offers a 100% network uptime guarantee.

Seven sites in the top 10 this month were running Linux, two were running FreeBSD and one was running Windows Server 2008.

Netcraft measures and makes available the response times of around forty leading hosting providers' sites. The performance measurements are made at fifteen minute intervals from separate points around the internet, and averages are calculated over the immediately preceding 24 hour period.

From a customer's point of view, the percentage of failed requests is more pertinent than outages on hosting companies' own sites, as this gives a pointer to reliability of routing, and this is why we choose to rank our table by fewest failed requests, rather than shortest periods of outage. In the event the number of failed requests are equal then sites are ranked by average connection times.

Information on the measurement process and current measurements is available.