Uptime is one of those problems that no webmaster really wants to deal with. Maybe, I should rephrase that and say that downtime is a problem that no webmaster wants to deal with. But, did you know the problem could actually be your web hosting company? I have tried out a lot of different web hosting companies out; I have discovered that some of them have more issues with downtime. As my MochaHost, Hostgator, and HostNine evaluation clearly show. In this article I am going to show you some ways you can monitor your website’s status so you know when your site is actually offline.
But, first how much downtime is too much? Realistically, 99.9% uptime is considered to be the industry standard. Here is a graphic that shows what 99.9% looks like daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly:
So, in no particular order here are the website monitoring services:
Uptime Robot
Uptime Robot is one of the most popular free and paid services you can use to monitor your websites uptime/downtime. The free version will check your site at 5 minute intervals. Uptime Robot will check your site 50 times and keep a log for 2 months. The paid version is $5.50 or $4.50 per month depending on how you do your billing. Uptime Robot will then check your website at 1 minute intervals. You do get 50 monitors, but can get up to 20,000 (for an extra fee). You do get 10 SMS credits and 1 year of log files.
You can even get a WordPress plugin for this service called “Uptime Robot For WordPress”. This plugin is completely free. https://wordpress.org/plugins/uptime-robot-monitor/ You do need to setup a free account with Uptime Robot in order to use this plugin. The process takes less than 5 minutes and then your set to monitor your website. You can than display your uptime stats or logs with a simple shortcode.
Pingdom Tools
Pingdom Tools is one of the most popular websites you can use to monitor your websites uptime/downtime. I have used it over the years to check my response time (loading time), but it’s main purpose is to monitor your downtime. You also see a “waterfall” of your website to see how quickly different plugins, images, etc. are taking to load. This service is not free, though. You will need to pay a monthly fee of $14.99. I should point out that you get a free iPhone app when you sign up with Pingdom Tools.
FreeSiteStatus.com
Don’t let the name fool you because freesitesstatus.com is not really free for monitoring your websites uptime. They do have 32 networks located around the world to monitor your websites uptime. They will even send alerts to your cell phone if your site is down. You can monitor your uptime in different intervals though. Depending on how often you want Freesitesstatus.com to check your website will determine how much this service is going to cost you per month. The prices are down below:
- Every minute – $12.00/month.
- Every 2 minutes – $7.00/month.
- Every 3 minutes – $5.00/month.
- Every 5 minutes – $3.00/month.
- Every 10 minutes – $2.50/month.
- Every 15 minutes – $2.00/month.
Monitor.com
Monitor.us is now monitis.com. This is another website where you can monitor your site. They offer plans that are very flexible so that you can setup your monitoring services in various intervals. You can specify the different locations you want your website to be monitored from. You can even setup SMS messages that will be delivered to your cell phone. Depending on how many monitors you use, locations, page views, sub-accounts, and reports will determine the monthly price tag.
StatusCake.com
Statuscake.com is another premium website status monitoring site. They do have a free plan which will check your site every 5 minutes. They can send you an unlimited amount of alerts and depending on your plan will check your site every second, 30 seconds, and minute. They can monitor your site from 60 different locations in their network. They provide customer support, virus checking, SSL monitoring, domain expiring monitoring, page speed monitoring, content matching, real browser testing, etc. Their three paid plans are $24.99/month, $79.99/month, and $389.99/month.
InternetSeer
InternetSeer.com is a website monitoring service that offers 3 different plans. They can monitor your websites in 5, 15, and 30 minute frequencies. They can provide you with content delivery and timing reports, visual status indicators, monitoring from various locations, error alerts, connection time charts and stats, suspension schedulers, history logs, text checking, customer support, link checks, image checks, and even check for hacker attempts. The prices are not listed on their website but they do have a 14 day free trial for all their services.
SiteUpTime.com
SiteUpTime.com is one of the oldest and most trusted website monitoring platforms known to many webmasters around the world. You can monitor your websites from 8 different locations, get email alerts, monthly reports, online statistics, monitor emails servers (pop3, and SMTP), SSL site support, FTP’s, etc. They offer a free service which checks your website every 30 to 60 minutes. Their two paid plans are $10 (Standard) and $20 (Pro) per month.
Uptrends
Uptrends.com is a premium website monitoring service that offers a plethora of monitoring tools to webmasters looking for a monitoring service. They can check your site in 5 to 60 minute intervals. You can have multiple users accounts setup with each of their plans. There is an option to have various user accounts so you can sell them to your clients that are looking to monitor their uptime. They will even send you SMS messages whenever your website goes down. Uptrends.com offers 5 different plans which range from $13.35 to $186.88 per month.
Montastic
Montastic is a website I have used in the past to monitor my sites uptime. Their free plan lets you check up on 3 sites in 30 minute invervals. Their Plus plan is $5/month and you can check 15 sites, their Business Plan is $10/month and you can check 50 sites, their Enterprise Plan is $19/month and you can check 100 sites, and their Enterprise Plus plan is $29/month and you can check 200 sites. All of their paid plans check your website every 5 minutes. They will send you email alerts whenever your site is down too.
Are My Sites Up?
This is another website that you can use to monitor your site/websites. It makes no difference whether you have one site you want to monitor or hundreds of sites you want to monitor. With aremysitesup.com you can choose from 10 different website monitoring services. The price tag for these services is between $8 per month to $192 per month.
Websites are checked in 1-minute intervals and your provided with stats and graphs, error codes, email alerts, SMS alerts, voice call notifications, multiple user accounts, webhooks, iPhone and Android apps, RSS checks and reports, and keyword searches. You can try out their plans for a 15 days risk free, too.
ServiceUpTime.com
ServiceUpTime is another popular website monitoring site that you can use to monitor your site or sites. They offer three different plans; Standard (for $4.95/month), it comes with worldwide locations, is checked at 3 min intervals, 10 monitors, and SMS and email notifications. Advanced ($9.95/month), it comes with worldwide locations, is monitored at 2 min intervals, 20 monitors, and SMS and email notifications. Professional ($52.95/month), it comes with worldwide locations, is verified in 1 min intervals, 110 monitors, and SMS and email notifications.
You can check your websites with ten monitoring locations, they provide you with daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly reports and statistics. Optionally, they do have a free website monitoring service which will check your site every 30 minutes.
Site24x7
Site24x7 is another website monitoring tool that has become very popular for server technicians and webmasters. They are a very cost efficient monitoring tool. They offer 3 different plans. Their Standard plan is $9/month which lets you monitor 10 websites, checks your site every minute, includes 100 RUM page views, and is tested from 8 different locations. Their Business plan is $35/month which lets you monitor 40 sites, checks your website every minute, includes 500 RUM page views, and is tested from 8 different locations. Their Premier plan is $449/month which lets you monitor 300 sites, checks your site every minute, includes 500,000 RUM page views, and is tested from 16 different locations. Each of their plans does give you SMS updates whenever your website is down.
downforeveryoneorjustme.com
If you want to check if your website is down or if it’s just possibly your internet connection downforeveryoneorjustme.com can help. You simply just put in your URL, and it checks to see if the website is up. You are then prompted to a page that either says the website is up or it’s down. Very simple site, but perfect for quickly checking sites. Also, you can use isup.me which is a short link to the site.
Isitdownrightnow.com
This is another website like downforeveryoneorjustme.com, but isn’t quite so basic. You only put in the URL that you want to check, and then you are prompted to a page which shows if the website is up or down. This page also shows the response time in milliseconds, and when the website was last down. Below all of this data it shows the site status history which shows the response times for the last couple of days. People do leave comments down below which can let you know that others are also having problems or issues logging onto a website. Also, there is a short link which is iidrn.com.
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