Top 10 Website Monitoring Tools
Nothing is worse than your website going down and you hearing about it from someone else. As a CDN provider, we take downtime very seriously. Downtime could affect your company or brand in many different ways, such as lost sales, a wrong first impression for new customers, customer loyalty, and your overall reputation.
Website monitoring is essential to ensure your website is always up and running, providing an optimal experience for your visitors. Today we want to dive into the top 10 website monitoring tools to help you stay on top of your website's uptime and ensure that your site is online and running 24/7 without a hitch.
I think that all services will have downtime. No matter how much you prepare, have redundant systems, or audit, there will periodically be a black swan event that is completely unlike whatever you've experienced before. It even happens to Google!"
Website downtime
When it comes to downtime, every second counts. Back in March 2016, Amazon.com went down for about 20 minutes. Internet Retailer estimates that a 20-minute outage cost Amazon about $3.75 million. Again, these are all estimates, but you can see how things begin to quickly add up. Especially when it pertains to large ecommerce sites. As a CDN provider we have it easier because we can route your requests to another edge server if one goes down. But with your origin server, most of the time you have a single point of failure. Below are just a few ways website downtime could affect you:
1. Sales
According to research from IDC, among the Fortune 1000 companies, the average total cost of unplanned application downtime per year is $1.25 billion to $2.5 billion. Another study by the Ponemon Institute estimated the cost to be $9,000 per minute, which adds up to over $540,000 per hour. These estimates highlight the importance of minimizing application downtime and the need for businesses to invest in robust IT systems and disaster recovery plans. By taking proactive steps to prevent downtime, companies can reduce the risk of costly outages and maintain the availability of their critical applications.
One more survey from Siemens Building Technologies shows that 33% of organizations don't even know the impact of one day's downtime on their business.
Here is a simple formula you can use to calculate how much profit you might lose if your website goes down:
Yearly Revenue / Business Hours x Website Impact to Sales %
And if you are solely an online retailer or ecommerce site, that impact % could very well be close to 100%. Which means every second counts!
2. Brand reputation
What is the very first thing people do today when a website is down? They go straight to Twitter and Facebook to voice their frustrations. This can be very bad for brand reputation, as you don't want potential new customers seeing this activity on social media. Frequent website downtimes can damage a business's reputation and make customers question the reliability and stability of the company. Below is an example of just a few of thousands that headed to social media when Amazon went down.
@amazon IS DOWN! I REPEAT! #amazon is DOWN! :(
— Steve Jenkins (@sjjenkins) March 10, 2016
Social media can be a very effective tool for companies and brands today, but it also forces you to be very transparent. There isn't anywhere to hide on the internet.
3. Dissatisfied customers
Once you have customers, you don't want to lose them! If your website goes down, especially for SaaS companies with application logins, this can be a disaster. Just like with web performance, customer's only have so much patience before they might think about switching to another service. For ecommerce sites, a customer might simply switch to your competitor and do their shopping there instead. So it is very important to maintain good uptime and keep your current customers happy.
4. First impression for new customers
Brian Tracy, a worldwide bestselling author, sums it up quite nicely:
A first impression says everything. Perhaps the simplest example of the application of this rule, that everything counts, involves your image or appearance. You've heard it said that you never get a second chance to make a good first impression. The fact is that when you first meet a person, he makes a judgment about you in approximately four seconds..."
You can almost guarantee that if a new customer is looking to purchase what you are selling and your website is down, they will never return. So make a good first impression! And while your at it, ensure your website loads fast. Check out our 18 tips on website performance optimization.
5. Search engine rankings
Website downtime can have a negative impact on search engine optimization (SEO) in several ways:
Search Engine Rankings: Search engines like Google may penalize websites that experience frequent downtime, which can negatively impact their search engine rankings. This can result in decreased visibility and reduced organic traffic.
Crawlability: Search engines crawl websites to index their content and determine their relevance. When a website is down, search engines may be unable to crawl the site, which can prevent the website's pages from being indexed and reduce their visibility in search results.
User Experience: Search engines take user experience into consideration when ranking websites, and website downtime can negatively impact the user experience. When a website is down, users may be unable to access the information they need, which can lead to frustration and a negative impression of the brand.
Link Juice: If a website is down for an extended period of time, it may result in broken links from other websites. When search engines encounter broken links, they may penalize the website, which can reduce its ranking and visibility in search results.
6. Security risks
Website downtime can also increase the risk of security breaches and hacking attacks, as websites that are down are often vulnerable to these types of threats.
List of website monitoring tools
Now that you have a few reasons why downtime is bad for your business and or brand, check out these 15 website monitoring tools below. Each of them offers their own unique features, notifications, and different ways to report your uptime. These are in no particular order and include both free and paid tools.
1. updown [paid]
updown is an awesome online service that checks your website's status by periodically sending an HTTP HEAD request to the URL of your choice. It then notifies you by email or SMS when your website is not responding correctly. updown was created by Adrien Jarthon, a software engineer, who was frustrated with not being able to find a really simple, cheap, and good looking service.
updown features
It currently features 8 monitoring nodes:
- Los Angeles, United States -
45.32.74.41/2001:19f0:6001:2c6::1 - Miami, United States -
104.238.136.194/2001:19f0:9002:11a::1 - Montreal, Canada -
198.27.83.55/2607:5300:60:2437::1 - Roubaix, France -
91.121.222.175/2001:41d0:2:85af::1 - Frankfurt, Germany -
104.238.159.87/2001:19f0:6c01:145::1 - Singapore, Singapore -
45.32.107.181/2001:19f0:4400:402e::1 - Tokyo, Japan -
45.76.104.117/2001:19f0:7001:45a::1 - Sydney, Australia -
45.63.29.207/2001:19f0:5801:1d8::1
Additional features include OAuth access, fast checks down to 30 seconds, Slack integration, reporting, double-checks, and SSL testing. Make sure to also check out their REST and Push APIs. The pricing is very affordable and is based on number of websites and frequency of checks. For example, if you wanted to check 10 websites every 1 minute it would cost around $6/month.
After a month and a half of trying out updown.io we love it. Bought some credits!
- Ben Word, Roots
2. Uptime [paid]
Uptime is another great website monitoring tool that focuses on reliability and easy setup. They are used by clients such as AARP, IBM, Cisco, and Kraft. Uptime also includes additional features such as transaction monitoring, page speed analysis & monitoring, virus & malware scanning, and real user monitoring (RUM).
Uptime features
Uptime monitors your website's availability and performance at one-minute intervals across 6 continents. You can get notified immediately by SMS, phone call, email or custom integrations if your website goes down. They support the following protocols: HTTP, HTTPS, Ping, SSH, TCP, UDP, DNS, SMTP, POP, and IMAP. They don't have a free plan, pricing starts at $8/month which includes 20 checks, US test locations, 4 months of history, and much more.
3. Uptime Robot [free + paid]
Uptime Robot is also another very popular website monitoring tool. It is used by Expedia, Nginx, Fandango and many others. They have been around since 2010 and are know for providing a great service when it comes to uptime monitoring.
Uptime Robot features
Uptime Robot features different monitoring locations in Germany, Canada, Japan, Brazil, Australia, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Singapore, Ireland, and the United States. It monitors your website every minute and lets you know if your sites are down based on the response from your websites headers.
They have a very generous free plan which includes 50 monitors on 5 minute intervals and 2 months of logs. Their paid plans start at $5.50/month which allow advanced notifications, 1 minute monitoring intervals, and SMS credits.
4. Pingdom [paid]
Pingdom, which you are probably already familiar with, is probably used the most out of all the different website monitoring tools on the market. Some of their clients include Apple, Pinterest, HP, Amazon, Google, and Dell. Pingdom is known to be very reliable and has a long history of providing uptime notifications to clients around the globe.
Pingdom features
Pingdom features a network of 100+ monitoring locations in which your website uptime is checked from. Pingdom provides real-time monitoring of websites and applications so that companies can be alerted immediately when a problem occurs. It also allows companies to monitor multiple websites and applications, including HTTP, HTTPS, and ping monitors.
You can set custom alerts based on your specific needs and requirements. For example, you can set alerts to notify you when your website is down, when certain pages are not loading properly, or when a certain threshold is reached. Pingdom also provides detailed tracking of website uptime and downtime, including the duration and frequency of outages, so businesses can identify and fix any issues that may cause downtime.
With the mobile app for iOS and Android, you can monitor their website anytime, anywhere. Alerts are available via email or SMS.
5. StatusCake [free + paid]
StatusCake is a very accurate global website monitoring tool used by thousands of customers. Some of their clients include Netflix, Go Daddy, DuckDuckGo, Google, EA, and NASA. They pride themselves in having no false positives and provide a lot more than just another uptime monitoring tool. They also have a lot of integrations for notifications, with tools such as Slack, Zapier, PagerDuty, and more.
StatusCake features
StatusCake features 40+ different monitoring locations around the globe. One unique thing about them is all their plans include unlimited monitors and unlimited alerts. Their premium plans include additional advanced features such as SSL monitoring, virus checking, domain expiration monitoring, page speed monitoring, browser testing, and even constant second check rates!
They do have a free plan which includes unlimited monitors, unlimited alerts, and a 5 minute check rate. Paid plans start out at around $20/month which include more test locations, 1 minute check rates, and much more.
6. New Relic [free + paid]
New Relic is very well known in the performance and developer community for providing a lot of different features and has been around since 2008. New Relic gives you deep performance analytics for every part of your software environment. You can easily view and analyze massive amounts of data, and gain actionable insights in real time. They do provide uptime alerts and availability reporting as part of the Synthetics product.
New Relic features
The New Relic Synthetics product allows you to use a ping monitor as well as a simple browser emulation to test from different locations around the globe, including the United States, Brazil, Europe, Australia, and Asia. And you set checks down to 1 minute intervals.
The platform offers deep insights into the performance and health of applications through its Application Performance Management (APM) feature, providing visibility into the underlying infrastructure to help businesses identify and resolve performance issues quickly. New Relic also provides detailed error tracking, enabling businesses to identify and fix issues that may be causing problems for their users. Custom alerts can be set based on specific needs and requirements, such as when a website is down, when specific pages are not loading properly, or when a certain threshold is reached. With its end-to-end transaction tracing, businesses can see exactly what is happening in their applications from the browser to the database and everything in between. The platform integrates with a range of other tools, including Slack, PagerDuty, and Zapier, to provide a comprehensive solution for website monitoring and management.
7. Datadog [free trial + paid]
Datadog is a website monitoring and management tool that provides a comprehensive solution for monitoring the performance and availability of your website and applications.
Datadog features
One of the key features of Datadog is its real-time monitoring, which alerts you immediately in case of any issues, allowing you to resolve problems before they affect your users quickly. The platform provides deep visibility into the performance of websites and applications through its Application Performance Monitoring (APM) feature, which allows you to identify and resolve performance issues quickly.
Datadog offers both a free trial and paid plans. The free trial allows you to test out the full range of features offered by Datadog, including website monitoring, application performance monitoring, error tracking, and custom alerting. Paid plans provide you with access to additional features, such as detailed performance reporting, custom dashboards, and advanced integration options with other tools.
8. Dynatrace [free trial + paid]
Dynatrace allows you to track the accessibility and efficiency of your internal resources using private monitors. It makes it easy for you to comprehend the experience your users have with your website and apps by measuring and recording crucial metrics.
Dynatrace provides three types of synthetic monitors to choose from. The first is a single-URL browser monitor, which behaves like a user visiting your website or app. It can be configured to run from different locations with a frequency of at least 5 minutes. The second option is a browser click path that functions similarly to the single-URL monitor but follows a specific path within your application. The third type is an HTTP monitor, which is a customizable HTTP request that can be executed at varying intervals.
Dynatrace features
Dynatrace offers a versatile solution for monitoring the performance and availability of your resources. It provides the flexibility to utilize real-user monitoring, synthetic monitoring, and session replay. This gives you the ability to monitor your application from multiple angles and get a complete understanding of how it's performing for your users. Additionally, Dynatrace is built with privacy and security in mind and meets the requirements of the GDPR regulations. With real-user monitoring, you can track the performance of mobile, hybrid, and single-page applications and gain insights into common analytics. These key features make Dynatrace a comprehensive solution for monitoring the health and performance of your applications.
Dynatrace's pricing starts at $11 per month for every ten thousand monitoring units. These units can be either Real User Monitoring, Session Replay, or Synthetic Monitoring. Dynatrace also offers a no-obligation free trial.
9. Uptrends [paid]
Uptrends offers both website monitoring and server monitoring. They have been around since 2007 and have worked with clients such as DHL, eBay, PBS, Schiesser, and Episerver. If you want a beautiful looking website monitoring tool, definitely give this one a look! Their dashboard UI is amazing.
Uptrends features
Uptrends features over 150 website monitoring locations around the globe. You can choose between 1-60 minute interval checks. They have additional features such as SSL certificate monitoring and real browser monitoring which include things like waterfall reports, mobile website monitoring, transaction screenshots, and third party content monitoring.
They don't have a free plan. Paid plans start out at $13.35/month which includes 10 monitors, 60 SMS alerts, a public status page, and 1 year of history.
10. Site24x7 [free + paid]
Out of all the website monitoring tools we have mentioned, Site24x7 is one of the oldest ones, operating since around 2006. They are now owned by Zoho and used by clients such as Groupon, Getty Images, Xerox, and Harley-Davidson. They offer website monitoring, server monitoring, and application monitoring.
Site24x7 features
Site24x7 features over 50 monitoring locations around the globe you can choose from. They support numerous protocols such as HTTP, HTTPS, REST API, DNS, Ping, TCP, FTP, POP, IMAP, and SMTP. They have integrations with popular services like Pager Duty and Zapier for notifications. 1 minute interval checks are done on all their plans and include false alert protection by rechecking from 3 additional locations.
Site24x7 does have a free plan which includes monitoring 5 websites and 10 alerts per month. Paid plans start at $9/month which include monitoring 10 websites, 8 test locations, and 50 alert credits.
Additional website monitoring tools
We can't include every website monitoring tool out there, but here are some additional ones that also deserve a mention that you can check out.
- Dotcom-Monitor
- PagerDuty
- Downdetector
- Monitor your website uptime with Google Scripts and Google Docs for free.
And of course you can't forget Down for Everyone or Just Me.
CDN monitoring
Perhaps you want to monitor your CDN provider as well as your web host? Any of the tools and services above can easily be used as a CDN monitoring tool. Remember though, a content delivery network (CDN) is all about reliability. For example, with KeyCDN, if a POP or edge server happens to go down, we automatically route the additional requests to the next nearest POP. This ensures that your content delivery never stops. Most CDN providers all have fail-overs in place in case of a catastrophe.
Summary
Monitoring your uptime is very important, so a tool like one of the ones above can come in very handy! The last thing you want to happen is to wake up one morning to discover your website offline and you didn't know about it. That could mean a loss in sales and customers. There are hundreds of different website monitoring tools out there you can try. We tried to list some of the most popular ones and those that we have used in our own testing. Hopefully, this saves you some time and perhaps you even discovered a new one you didn't know about.
Did we miss any really important ones? If so, feel free to comment below.