Is your website currently available? - Website monitoring part 1

 

Unfortunately, it is not a matter of course that your own website is available online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Power outages, server damage, floods and other disasters (or just bad technology) can mean that your website cannot be reached. If such incidents accumulate, it is time to change providers.

With these 3 German-language tools you can check for free whether your website is accessible or not.

Website Monitoring - What is it?

99% uptime of your own website sounds good, doesn't it?

But that means the website is offline for more than 87 hours a year. So more than 3.5 days are not available. But what's even worse is that these failures don't really happen in one go. But here a few minutes and a few minutes there. There is a good chance that annoyed website visitors won't come back the next time.

As a webmaster, you can of course log in every few minutes to see whether your website is stable. If this is too time-consuming for you, you can alternatively use an online service that takes over the examination.

The so-called website monitoring services are online tools. So you don't have to install anything, just enter some data on the service's homepage.

Which German-language website monitoring services are there?

There are some German-speaking services. I'll limit myself to the free ones that I've tested. These are completely sufficient for most purposes.

• www.ueberendung-server.de [ Link ]

This service is free of charge in the basic version. Every 10 minutes you can have your websites checked (unlimited number). That is also completely sufficient. If you want to check the server more often, there are costs. Here it is even possible to test your own websites every 15 seconds.

In the free version, you can only check HTTP access. So the normal website call. The testing of other protocols such as FTP or SMTP (a total of 16 different) is chargeable. This service offers a lot of possibilities.

You can then view the statistics online as well as have them sent to you by email. There are also SMS notifications and (especially well) RSS feed for your own monitoring. In the daily email (see right) all tests of the respective day are displayed, as well as a daily summary. In the event of a failure, you will of course be notified immediately.

The statistics on the website are of course password protected. The stats look very good and the error messages are clearly summarized again.

Prices:

Here you can easily buy new functions. Basically these are only 2. You can purchase a new service (ie SMTP, database check, etc.) with a specific check frequency. For example, a new service that carries out a check every 60 seconds costs 6 euros per month. OK.

All in all, a very attractive service with many functions. The free basic service is definitely sufficient for self-employed people with few websites.

www.netchecker.de [ Link ]

Netchecker is another free monitoring service. From numerous points of view it is like the past one. But there are also differences. With Netchecker you can only have one website monitored for free. Additional websites currently cost a one-time fee of 2.99 euros.

The free service also only includes exam intervals of 30 and 60 minutes. So here you can't pull the “exam network” so tightly.

It is very interesting not only to check whether the website is accessible or not, but also to check whether certain content has changed. This could be used very well, for example to quickly see whether your website has been cracked and hackers have modified the content. You can also perform port scans to quickly identify any open ports.

Any failures and a monthly summary will be sent by email. SMS are also possible. However, there are costs for this (after a few free SMS). The email is not structured very nicely and rather dull. But at least one recognizes the necessary data.

The online statistics are well done for this and you get a good overview of your own websites. In addition to actual failures, it is also displayed here whether particularly long server response times have occurred. This could indicate a “bad neighborhood”, especially with shared hosts. However, it could have been a few more dates.

Another nice feature is the ability to limit the test to certain days of the week. However, I can't think of a reasonable reason for this :-)

Prices:

In addition to a flat rate for an SMS package (for notification in the event of failures), each additional website costs EUR 2.99 once. That is clear and okay. However, no other great services seem to exist either. If you want to know more, you should contact us directly, it says on the homepage.

Nice admin interface with sufficient functions. A few features are very popular, but the standard exam interval of 30 minutes is just about acceptable.

 

webseitenueberendung.com [ Link ]

The guys and gals from Website Monitoring.com offer a range of service packages. Here, too, there is a free one, which however offers the fewest options of the 3 services. But one after another.

With the free package it is possible to monitor only one website. But that could be enough for an entrepreneur with a website or a shop. So that's not even negative. In contrast, the test interval is insufficient. The website is only checked every 24 hours. Far too rarely, of course, and actually already a knockout criterion.

In addition, it is only possible to monitor HTTP services and only whether the server can be reached. Content changes cannot be checked. I only received the statistics email every 2 weeks and it wasn't very informative either.

The online statistics, on the other hand, are really good. But only for paying customers. As a user of the basic package, hardly any statistics are displayed here.

Pricing:

Paid services start at $ 2.95 a month. But even the most expensive package at $ 24.50 a month only includes 3 monitored services. A clear weak point for owners of many websites. The test interval can be reduced to 5 minutes. That’s very good.

Another nice feature of the paid version is the ability to put together a package yourself. There you can then set everything as you need it.

This service is for website operators who really only need the bare essentials. However, since only a free check is possible in 24 hours, the basic package is actually unusable. Better than the others are the paid packages. There are more options here.

Which one do I like best?

From a purely subjective point of view, I like the service of ueberendung-server.de best. Here the free service is sufficient for my purposes and the features offered are ok.

You will find out in a few days whether there are even better services. Then I will check the English-speaking monitoring services. Until then.