Why monitoring site uptime matters (and doing it for free!)

Pingdom is one of my favourite free tools for monitoring uptime of the websites we create – everyone should use it! It not only saves money but, crucially, it avoids embarrassment with clients and customers. How?

It comes down to understandng how reliable your site is. Downtime can be very damaging – it can lead to loss of sales, upset customers and creates a negative image. If people can't access your site, the chances are they'll head elsewhere.

Having an uptime checking service in place shortcircuits these issues by alerting you when your site is down, usually before anyone else finds out. It gives you the chance to get it back up quickly and, once back, gives you insights so that you can prevent downtime in the future. For us, it's about keeping our clients happy.

Most hosting companies have an uptime agreement (nothing like this though). Chances are you'll be eligible for a discount (or, at least, some love and attention) if your host is not fufilling their promises. Plus, having uptime monitoring is a good way to gauge how good a host they are. A good hosting company will welcome the fact that you monitor uptime and hold them accountable, as it helps them improve their service. With a not-so-great host, well... Who wants to be with a not-so-great host?

So, it's not only great for tracking and debugging intermittent issues such as a poorly loading page on an otherwise speedy site, it also helps clients decide what the best hosting solution is for them.

What do Pingdom give you for free?

• Monitoring of one site;
• Unlimited email alerts (one email when your site goes down, and another when it's back up – along with the actual downtime in minutes);
• 20 SMS alerts;
• A monthly report of your site's uptime including percentage of uptime.

How does it work?

You can create a single check for free by entering your site's URL and an optional piece of text to look for on the page (if it's not there it'll consider the site down). You then choose how often to check (every 1, 5, 15, 30 minute(s) to every hour). Then, decide the period of downtime before alerts are sent. The site must be down for at least one minute before notification. You can also select the notification method – email, SMS, Twitter or apps. There are other options on top of these too, ranging from providing htaccess/password details to changing the request headers of the check.

Cool things you can do when you pay up

• Have multiple checks;
• Track how much free RAM your server has;
• Track how much CPU load your server is under;
• Trigger alerts at threshold points eg when CPU load is at 10;
• See reports of your checks over time, eg for evaluating server performance and when it's time for an upgrade;
• Track a piece of text at the end of a page to keep an eye on load time or and rendering.

Pingdom is my tool of choice so things are about to get more Pingdomy! However, in the spirit of fairness, here are some other uptime monitoring services worth checking out:

• UptimeRobot
• Mon.itor.us
• Are My Sites Up?
• SiteUptime
• StatusCake