Free Downtime Cost Calculator
How much does website downtime actually cost you? Enter your numbers and see the real impact of every minute offline.
Free Tool · Instant calculation · No signup required
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Enter your numbers
Fill in the form to see how much downtime costs your business
Your Downtime Cost
Breakdown
What If Scenarios
| Duration | Lost Revenue | Lost Conversions |
|---|
Note: This calculates direct revenue loss only. It doesn't include:
- Reputation damage and lost trust
- SEO impact from extended downtime
- Support costs handling complaints
- Lost lifetime value of churned customers
Real costs are typically 2-3x higher than direct revenue loss.
The Hidden Costs of Downtime
The calculator above shows direct revenue loss. But downtime has ripple effects that multiply the true cost:
SEO Impact
Extended downtime can cause Google to temporarily de-index pages. Recovery can take days or weeks, affecting organic traffic long after you're back online.
Customer Trust
Users who encounter errors lose confidence. Studies show 88% of users are less likely to return after a bad experience. First impressions matter—especially for new visitors.
Support Costs
Every minute of downtime generates support tickets, social media complaints, and chat requests. Your team spends time apologizing instead of building.
Customer Lifetime Value
A customer who leaves during an outage doesn't just cost you one sale— you lose their entire lifetime value. For SaaS, this can be months or years of revenue.
Brand Reputation
Social media amplifies outages. One viral tweet about your downtime reaches thousands of potential customers. The PR damage outlasts the technical issue.
Opportunity Cost
Time spent fighting fires is time not spent growing. Every hour in incident response is an hour not building features, marketing, or serving customers.
Learn more about real availability: Why uptime is not enough.
Downtime Cost Benchmarks
How does your downtime cost compare? Here are industry averages:
| Business Type | Avg. Cost Per Hour | Avg. Cost Per Minute |
|---|---|---|
| Small e-commerce ($10K/mo) | $14 | $0.23 |
| Medium e-commerce ($100K/mo) | $139 | $2.31 |
| Large e-commerce ($1M/mo) | $1,389 | $23 |
| SaaS (per $10K MRR) | $14 | $0.23 |
| Enterprise (Fortune 1000 avg.) | $500,000+ | $8,300+ |
Sources: Gartner, ITIC, various industry reports. Actual costs vary significantly based on industry, time of day, and business model.
How to Reduce Downtime Cost
You can't eliminate downtime completely. But you can minimize its impact:
1. Detect Faster
The difference between 5-minute detection and 1-hour detection is huge. With proper monitoring, you know about issues before most customers do.
Multi-region monitoring catches issues that single-point monitoring misses.
2. Communicate Proactively
A status page lets you control the narrative. Customers who know you're working on it are more patient than customers who think you don't know.
Create a free status page or set up an emergency status page during incidents.
3. Have a Response Plan
Who gets alerted? Who has access to fix it? What's the escalation path? Having a plan saves critical minutes during incidents.
Read our guide on communicating incidents clearly.
4. Monitor What Matters
Don't just monitor your homepage. Monitor checkout, login, API endpoints— the critical paths where downtime hurts most.
Learn more: What is uptime monitoring?
Frequently Asked Questions
Don't Let Downtime Drain Your Revenue
Now you know what downtime costs. PerkyDash helps you catch it faster and communicate better when it happens.
Free tier includes 5 monitors, 12 global regions, and status pages.