It's 3 a.m. Do you know how your website is behaving?
If you run an online business of any kind, you should, because downtime and poor website performance not only causes lost revenue, it also can lead to a loss of reputation and loyalty.
Fortunately, keeping tabs on your website 24/7 is an easy task thanks to services that automate the process of monitoring your website around the clock.
If your website goes down or slows to a crawl, these services will automatically notify you using a variety of methods such as email, pager and SMS.
Many of these services enable you to monitor specific services/protocols (i.e. web, email, etc.) as well as custom scripts on your website.
Some even permit the configuration of advanced alert criteria and provide for escalation procedures that alert different people if the website remains down after initial alerts.
Here are 4 popular monitoring services:
AlertBot
Monitors: All major protocols, custom scripts
Alert Delivery: Email, SMS, paging
Reporting Tools: Yes
Escalation Rules: Yes
Cost: Based on protocols monitored and frequency of checks
Alertra
Monitors: All major protocols, custom scripts
Alert Delivery: Email, phone, SMS, paging
Reporting Tools: Yes
Escalation Rules: Yes
Cost: Based on protocols monitored and frequency of checks
AlertSite
Monitors: Most protocols, custom scripts
Alert Delivery: Email, phone, SMS, paging
Reporting Tools: Yes
Escalation Rules: Yes
Cost: 30-day free trial, plans and pricing provided upon request or after trial expires
Uptrends
Monitors: HTTP, HTTPS, POP3, DNS, TCP connect, match and PING
Alert Delivery: Email, SMS, RSS, IM
Reporting Tools: Yes
Escalation Rules: Yes
Cost: Free 1 website plan available, other plans start at $23/month
Reader comments (4)
Marketing at Sitemorse Ltd
5:18PM on 27th June 2008
Perhaps we could suggest looking at the service we offer, not only do we alert if the site is down - but we also monitor performance, numerous functions, accessibility, code quality and metadata (we offer over 600 tests, checks and measures).
There are differing levels of service, checking from every 15 seconds to 15 minutes.
For E-consultancy clients, we offer a free trial.
Alert Delivery: Email, SMS, RSS, IM.
Director at Periscope IT
9:50AM on 9th July 2008
Hi
Would it be possible for you to add our company to this page. We are listed in your suppliers list, but it would be really great if you could put a mention of us on this page. Furthermore we are one of a small number of UK firms specialising in monitoring services which might appeal to you users.
Our basic information (as per the information you have provided above for other service providers) is:
Monitors: All major protocols, custom scripts
Alert Delivery: Email, SMS, paging
Reporting Tools: Yes
Escalation Rules: Yes
Cost: From £4/month increasing depending frequency of checks and depth of testing
5:03PM on 18th August 2008
Patrick,
You might also want to take a look at site24x7.com. It is a website monitoring service from the makers of Zoho - online office. We offer both free & paid versions.
http://site24x7.com
CEO at SciVisum.co.uk
10:53AM on 11th September 2008
rather than monitoring URLs, to really see how users experience your site, you need to be web monitoring User Journeys - the multi-page rotes through your site, that are the 'money-makers'.
That way you spot problems that page monitoring completely misses, eg problems that effect maybe 2 or 5% of users at random:
* session swaps - half way through a journey, two users' sessions are swapped... both see valid pages so no alarms go off.... but it's broken
* jump backs - part way through the buyng journey, the user gets jumped back to an earlier page in the process... again, a valid page so the analytics and web logs show nothing, but broken for the user.
* wrong content - the Add-To-Basket journey that works through a site from homepage via a search and then choosing a product offered at random - we've seen searches that for 5% of the time, respond wrongly with a 'nothing matches your query.
etc
Multi-page User Journeys really helps to focus on the ROI, and helps the organisation acros the board focus on improvement - all teams can understand the Journeys being monitored and what impact they ahve when slow or broken.
Deri
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