Is your website currently available? - Website monitoring part 2

Today follows the second part of the series on website monitoring services. After a few German providers were presented last time some online monitoring solutions from English speaking countries will follow today. You can find out which and advantages and disadvantages these have here

Website monitoring from abroad

Now some people will wonder why to choose an overseas monitoring service. You can not say that across the board, as it depends on the respective situation. However many German language websites also run on international servers without the website operator knowing.

A nice Firefox add-on is " Flagfox II ". This shows in the status bar of the Firefox browser a small flag of the country in which the server of the website you are currently visiting is located.

However, since most monitoring providers maintain servers in many countries and several continents anyway in order to be able to optimally test website accessibility, it really doesn't make much difference whether the monitoring service comes from Germany europe or overseas.

The American website monitoring services

The following is an overview of the English speaking monitoring providers that I have recently tested.

www.site24x7.com [ Link ]

Site24x7.com is currently my monitoring service of choice. A few months ago this service started completely free of charge. Anyway this is not true anymore.

This service lets you do other things besides actually monitoring websites. This is how you can analyze the performance of a website, i.e how quickly the website reacts over a certain period of time.

But it is also possible to check whether the content of a website has changed. For example, you can quickly identify hack attempts.

The paid version naturally offers more performance than the free version. This makes it possible to monitor your own websites at intervals of between 5 and 60 minutes. Monitoring of DNS servers is also possible. As a nice bonus! you can also use a few tools. These analyze, for example, your own website for loading times and the size of individual elements. But the IP of a domain can also be found out.

In both variants you can be informed about failures and problems via email, RSS and SMS. As usual, the SMS cost extra. The report email can be sent to you daily and / or weekly. This is optically very well prepared. Better than any other provider.

Prices:

The free version includes 2 websites, but only a check interval of 60 minutes which is really not very good. The paid version starts at $ 0.50 a month and depends on the number of websites monitored and the frequency of checks.

I use the professional service of site24x7.com intensively. The monitoring is reliable and the website is easy to use. In addition the emails are nicely laid out and contain a lot of useful information.

www.serviceuptime.com [ Link ]

Serviceuptime.com also has servers all over the world, a total of 10. This guarantees good test conditions. In addition to normal websites, this service can monitor various protocols, applications (POP3, SMTP, IMAP, FTP, DNS, MYSQL) and ports.

The evaluations are very extensive and graphically nicely prepared. Definitely useful. The statistics can be evaluated daily, weekly, monthly or annually and are therefore very easy to evaluate.

The free account includes a website that is checked every 30 minutes. The other protocols and applications are even included in the free package.

In addition to the free package there are of course also paid offers. These include a different number of websites and shorter time intervals.

Prices:

The free version offers webmasters who only manage a single website very good functions. The paid plans start at $ 4.95 per month. Which paid package you then choose depends on certain factors. The main difference between these packages is the different number of websites monitored and the shorter inspection intervals.

Serviceuptime.com offers many possibilities to monitor your own website. The free version offers completely sufficient functionalities for the small craftsman with a website.

www.montastic.com [ Link ]

Www.montastic.com offers a completely free service. Here you can have up to 100 websites monitored every 10 minutes. That works very well too.

Another nice feature is the ability to display the status of your website not only via email and RSS feed, but also via the Yahoo widget. This widget can be displayed on your own desktop and as soon as a website is not accessible it turns red. Definitely a good idea, especially since I like using the Yahoo Widgets anyway.

In contrast, the statistical analysis on the montastic.com website is insufficient. You don't have a history, so you can't really see the percentage of failures.

The e-mail information is just as simple if there are failures. There is nothing more than an “unreachable” in the event of a failure and an “OK” when the site is accessible again. According to the providers, montastic.com is only a by-product of your actual work and you can hardly expect any major further developments.

Prices:

The entire service is free of charge and there are no additional services with costs.

Nevertheless, montastic.com is a nice service that focuses exclusively on the here and now. If a webmaster doesn't need statistics etc., this free monitoring service is definitely an alternative.

siteuptime.com

Somehow, most monitoring services seem to offer exactly the same thing. Siteuptime.com is also a representative of this cloning strategy. Here you can also find a free monitoring package that checks 1 website every 30 or 60 minutes.

If the website cannot be reached, you will be informed by email or SMS. It is interesting that with the free version you can not only monitor HTTP web servers, but also POP3, SMTP and FTP servers.

An RSS feed, SMS notifications and details about the problem are only available if you subscribe to one of the paid packages. The statistics in their own area are very nice. There you can find daily evaluations as well as monthly summaries.

It's a bit strange that even the most expensive package, $ 10 / month, only includes 6 websites. For webmasters who want to monitor a lot of servers, it is a bad solution.

Prices:

In addition to the free package, there are 2 other offers. The Premium Package ($ 5 / month) allows 3 websites to be checked every 5 or 15 minutes. You can also call up the statistics via RSS feed. The Advanced Package ($ 10 / month) can check 6 websites and also check ports and SSL sites. You can book extra  for example 2-minute checks and checking whether the content of a website has changed.

Good, but not spectacular, service. The free package is okay and the paid ones are well worth the price.

www.mon.itor.us [ Link ]

"Mon.itor.us" offers a very comprehensive service. Here you can not only have a website checked, but also, for example, have

the visitors to your website evaluated. With its services "mon.itor.us" goes beyond pure website monitoring. Very good.

In addition, the website monitoring service is free and offers a lot of statistics and features. At any rate as long as it's in beta. It is not foreseeable whether it will be charged afterwards.

mon.itor.us checks your websites from several servers worldwide and can monitor not only HTTP, but also SMTP, POP3, FTP and other protocols. The statistics that can be viewed are extensive. However your own statistics area takes a bit of getting used to, as you can design it yourself. So you can show and hide your favorite stats and information. I find it too confusing.

However, the service is really good. The weekly statistics can be emailed to you as a PDF, for example. An RSS feed is also available. SMS are currently not possible.

Prices:

The service is currently free, but offers a lot of performance.

mon.itor.us is a really recommendable provider, and the only thing that scares me is my own statistics pages. But that's more of a subjective thing. The reports are good, there doesn't seem to be any restrictions in the number of websites checked and therefore mon.itor.us can only be recommended.

www.host-tracker.com [ Link ]

Host-Tracker also offers free and paid services. While only 2 websites can be checked in the free version, the Premium Professional Package, for example, contains a total of 200 websites.

The free service checks every 30 minutes and generates weekly, monthly and yearly reports. However, checking the content of a website for changes is only possible in the paid packages.

The possibility of being able to test the premium service for 30 days free of charge is very good. This gives you access to all professional features and you can see exactly whether they are worthwhile. I wonder why other providers don't offer such test periods as well.

The statistics are clear and offer a good insight into the stability of your own website. I also like the weekly and monthly status emails. There doesn't appear to be a RSS channel. 

Prices:

The prices are not without. The light package contains only 5 websites and 10 minute check intervals ($ 4.99). The Pro plan lets you monitor 20 websites every 60 seconds for as little as $ 29.99. The premium package for $ 99.99 per month can check 200 websites and also includes 150 SMS.

Those who pay quarterly or annually in advance can save up to 33%.

Not bad service, but somehow nothing that others don't offer. And the paid packages are too expensive for me. You can definitely use the 30-day test phase.

www.dotcom-monitor.com [ Link ]

Last but not least a few words about "dotcom-monitor.com" Here, too, you can test the many features with a 30 day test account. In addition to normal website monitoring, a website load test can be carried out for example. It is checked what the own server can withstand and from what number of users it collapses.

Even if the features look really good overall, the free account is a bit disappointing. Having 1 website checked every 60 minutes (with a backlink, otherwise only every 4 hours) is really nothing exciting.

There is also a huge number of paid packages, which are, however, very expensive. This is actually not worthwhile for the normal website operator. The statistics of the free variant are not very extensive but certainly sufficient.

Pricing:

In addition to the very limited free package, there are 45 paid packages. These can also be combined with a few other services. For example, monitoring 20 websites every 5 minutes costs $ 209.99 / month. This is very expensive compared to the other good services.

Not a bad provider for absolute professionals. The additional offers besides website monitoring are particularly interesting. For the small website operator, however, the free package is not really sufficient and the paid packages are too expensive.

Summary website monitoring

My favorite is"www.site24*7.com" I've been there since the beta phase and I've gotten used to the service. Overall the stats and functions are best for me and the prices are right in my opinion.

Of the German website monitoring services  I liked www.ueberendung-server.de best. I will definitely use it in parallel as well.

For the self-employed with one or more websites, there is sure to be a free service that they are satisfied with. However you have to test a little, as every monitoring service has its advantages and disadvantages. But there is enough choice.

You can find more tips here

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