The Cost of Downtime Across Industries

Jun 05, 2025
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At its best, unexpected downtimes can put a brief obstacle between your team and their goals. If things go really wrong—especially if you own a business in a highly regulated industry—downtimes can lead to wasted labor, lost revenue, fines, and even lawsuits.

It’s best to know your enemy. Understand “good” vs “bad” downtimes, how things can go wrong, and how you can help protect your SMB from these issues in the future.

How Downtimes Happen

Unplanned downtime seems to hit out of nowhere, and always when your business is least equipped to handle it. Here’s what usually goes wrong: 

  • Software bugs:
    Every time developers make an update or a change, an incompatibility in your software can cause unexpected errors that lead to a full-scale disruption.
  • Human error:
    Developers and IT teams are people, meaning they can make mistakes. An introduced error can create an inconsistency that trips up the system, just like a bug would.
  • Bad actors:
    Cybercriminals can slow, stall, or even steal from systems, especially for business owners in finance, medicine, or other highly targeted industries.

If it seems like downtimes are 1) happening more frequently and 2) getting more expensive, that could be due to a number of changing factors in the ways companies handle IT and data.

  • A rise in data communication:
    With the rise of AI, the Internet of Things, and 5G technologies, more businesses are intaking and outputting more data across technologies and employees than ever before.
  • An increasing reliance on IT:
    As AI tools and other automated systems begin to more heavily supplement employee workflows, the IT systems that keep these tools operating become more complex and subsequently easier to break. 
  • Faster IT evolutions:
    Software and hardware have to be updated constantly to keep up with today’s changing technologies. If a business fails to keep updates and replacements current, systems can more easily fail.

The Cost of Downtime, by Industry

According to EMA Research, unplanned downtime costs reached new heights in 2024. For SMBs, unplanned downtimes cost an average of $14,056 per minute; for enterprise, as much as $23,750. 

But how can these numbers balloon so large? These figures capture more than just the money it takes to get essential services back up and running. The data measure opportunity cost, a summation of all of the employee labor, leads, and sales that couldn’t happen due to IT disruptions. When your company can’t perform its most basic functions for several hours or days, the cost ramps up quickly.

But there’s more to cost than dollars and cents. While downtime certainly has an associated dollar cost associated with it, downtime can pay a heavier price than simply costing your business money in the short term. Consider the other losses downtime may accrue:

Reputation:

If your business isn’t operating, customers are likely to get frustrated, leave negative reviews, and possibly choose a competitor’s services over your own. 

Fines or Lawsuits:

Improperly secured databases can leave hapless companies liable for data leaks, especially in highly-regulated industries such as medicine or finance.

Data Integrity:

Downtimes are often the result of cybercrime or crashes. If your company had vital data lost or stolen, it’s likely to cause inconsistencies in your reporting and slow your employees moving forward.

Productivity:

If your employees can’t access essential digital tools, they’re likely to experience productivity disruptions. This problem can become an ongoing one if key data was lost 
or stolen.

Employee Satisfaction:

Angry customers, upset leadership, and tools on the fritz: mitigating a disruption can be taxing on your employees and may convince them to look elsewhere.

How Much Downtime is Acceptable?

Surprisingly, there’s no such thing as a zero-downtime business. While it’s extremely important to mitigate unplanned downtime, planned downtime is a common tool IT teams use to upkeep a company’s digital health. This downtime is typically spent cleaning, updating, and compliance-checking internal systems, with updates happening in the wee hours of the morning when customers are likely asleep.

Today’s enterprise companies talk about “five-nines availability.” This is a nickname for the gold star in availability: 99.999% uptime. Over the course of a year, a company that wants to achieve five-nines availability would need to experience downtime for only 5.26 minutes. 

Does your SMB business need to achieve 99.999% uptime? No. For most companies, a bi-monthly, 2 am update will be worth the associated costs. Sure, you might miss a few night owl purchasers or very early customer support calls, but the tradeoff is the ability to prevent the kinds of IT mishaps that cause costly, unplanned downtime. 

Prevent Downtime with IPM

Downtimes are entirely preventable, but outsourced IT solutions can be expensive, unresponsive, or both. At IPM, we offer tailored IT solutions from a team of experts you actually get to know. While our services work 24/7 to stop downtimes before they happen, our teams stand ready to jump in at the first sign of trouble.

At IPM, we understand the challenges of SMBs: you need tailored IT services, close communication, and 24/7 support, all without breaking the bank. We have over 20 years of experience offering SMBs comprehensive IT services, including:

  • Managed Backup and Disaster Recovery
  • 24/7 Managed Security
  • Private and Hybrid Cloud IT
  • Private Cloud AI

Prevent unplanned downtimes, receive support when you need it, and grow your business without compromising on security. Partner with us.

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