Review: Server Uptime Monitoring Services
Downtime is damaging for any website.
Sometimes, you may be totally unaware that your site is offline.
Monitoring services are your 24/7 watchdog against outages. They can you via email, text message or instant message when your site becomes unreachable.
But how do they stack up in terms of price or features?
[Note: This article was originally published in 2009. Some elements are out of date.]
Host-tracker.com
Host-tracker.com‘s free monitoring account is fairly basic.
The Light and the Pro accounts come with free SMS credits and can monitor things like CGI scripts.
The two larger accounts, Pro 50 and Premium, track 50 and 200 URLs respectively.
| Accounts | Free | Light | Pro |
| Cost/Month | $0 | $5 | $30 |
| Monitored Connections | 2 | 5 | 20 |
| Monitoring Interval (Max, Minutes) | 30 | 5 | 1 |
| Monitoring Locations | 49 | 49 | 49 |
| Alerts | Email/SMS | Email/SMS | Email/SMS |
Mon.itor.us/Monitis
Mon.itor.us and Monitis are the free and pro versions of the same software.
Mon.itor.us is the free version. Monitis the paid version; it has two variants, Basic and Plus.
Mon.itor.us is possibly the most robust free account on our list, offering 10 different protocols and a decent check interval. Both versions offer internal server montoring, allowing you to watch the health of your server before it goes down.
| Accounts | Mon.itor.us | Monitis Basic | Monitis Plus |
| Cost/Month | $0 | $10 | $40 |
| Monitored Connections | N/A | 5 | 30 |
| Monitoring Interval (Max, Minutes) | 30 | 5 | 5 |
| Monitoring Locations | 3 | 5 | 5 |
| Alerts | Email/IM/SMS | Email/IM/SMS | Email/IM/SMS |
Pingdom
Pingdom is the only company on this list to not offer a free account, though it does offer a free 30-day trial. It provides monitoring, DNS server checks and mail server checks.
| Accounts | Basic | Business |
| Cost/Month | $10 | $40 |
| Monitored Connections | 5 | 30 |
| Monitoring Interval (Max, Minutes) | 1 | 1 |
| Monitoring Locations | 4* | 4* |
| Alerts | Email/SMS | Email/SMS |
Site 24×7
Site 24×7 prices its services differently.
Rather than paying for a package, the user pays based on the frequency of monitoring checks.
It also checks web applications, mail servers, FTP and content.
| Accounts | Free | Standard | Premium |
| Cost/Month | $0 | N/A | N/A |
| Monitored Connections | 2 | N/A | N/A |
| Monitoring Interval (Max, Minutes) | 60 | N/A | N/A |
| Monitoring Locations | 1 | 1 | Up to 15 |
| Alerts | Email/SMS/RSS | Email/SMS/RSS | Email/SMS/RSS |
SiteUptime
SiteUptime‘s free account is very limited. The premium account is slightly better, but the interval of 5 minutes is still quite long.
On the plus side, SiteUptime does provide monitoring of FTP and SSL connections.
| Accounts | Free | Premium | Advanced |
| Cost/Month | $0 | $5 | $10 |
| Monitored Connections | 1 | 3 | 6 |
| Monitoring Interval (Max, Minutes) | 30 | 5 | 5 |
| Monitoring Locations | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Alerts | Email/SMS |
Which Server Uptime Monitor’s For Me?
If you want a free solution, we liked Mon.itor.us. It has the best interval and the largest number of alerts for a free package.
Paid monitoring services are mixed; Host-tracker has the most monitoring locations, and Site 24×7 has the most flexible account.
Overall, Pingdom seems to provide the best value and offers a good all-round service for the price.
Claire is a freelance writer. She works with us through Red Robot Media, which she runs along with her associate Mathew Dixon. In addition, Claire is an accomplished musician who has toured the world with her band Printed Circuit. She lives in the United Kingdom.
[…] Begin Monitoring Your Server: If your host uses HyperVM, now is an important time to start monitoring your server to make sure it is active and accurate. I previously reviewed many great services that can help with exactly that. […]
June 11th, 2009 at 3:44 am
Nice thorough review of these server monitoring services.
I am looking forward to your next post on tips and tricks to ensure that your server is well monitored.
September 2nd, 2009 at 12:04 pm