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Let's face it, you cannot be monitoring your website 24-7 but still for webmasters who are generating revenue from their websites, you need to be there as soon as possible to fix things up when there's a downtime, or else you'll potentially suffer a revenue lost. For those who are not making money from their website, there's still a hit on reputation if the site has gone down for hours (or days) and the owner wasn't aware. You could lose visitors, or worst, loyal followers.

Fortunately, there are web services that check
your website from time to time (whether it's free or paid services) and notifies you so you can get your hands on it when there'sa downtime. Here's a compilation of various
Web Services and Tools to Monitor Website Uptime and Downtime. Full list after jump.

Free Web Monitoring

If you have not done this before, it's good to start with a free tracker. There are plenty of
web services that track
your website status without needing to pay a penny. That of course, comes with some limitation and it varies between service providers. Together with the list compiled, we highlight some information you might want to know:

1. Mon.itor.us

   

   Not only they monitors more than 120,000 sites, Mon.itor.us also offer services like Internal Monitoring and Visitors Tracking. [Read more]

   Frequency: 5 mins
   Premium Services: Yes
   upported Protocols: HTTP/HTTPS, POP3, IMAP, FTP, TCP/IP, more

2. Site Uptime

   

   SiteUptime is a website
   monitoring service that checks
   your website at regular intervals and notifies you via email or SMS if it becomes unavailable. [Read more]

   Frequency: 30 mins
   Premium Services: Yes
   upported Protocols: N/A
   Alert via: Email, SMS

3. Internet Seer

   

   Perhaps one of the largest webmonitoring service available. Services include Availability Monitoring, Performance Monitoring, Link and Image Checking, Transaction Monitoring, Historical and Detailed Check and Alert Reporting. [Read more]

   Frequency: 5 mins
   Premium Services: Yes
   upported Protocols: HTTP, HTTPS, SMTP. POP3 and other Ports

4. Site 24×7

   

   Site24×7 is the easier, faster and more effective way to monitor the
   uptime and performance of your web sites, online services and servers. [Read more]

   Frequency: 60 mins
   Premium Services: Yes
   upported Protocols: HTTP, DNS,
   Alert via: Email, SMS, RSS

5. HyperSpin

   
   Website monitoring, web server monitoring & server monitoring from worldwide locations. [Read more]

   Frequency: 1 Hour
   Premium Services: Yes
   upported Protocols: Ping, HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, SSH, SMTP, DNS, POP3, IMAP, MySQL, and any arbitrary services running on TCP/IP
   Alert via: Email, SMS

6. HostTracker

   

   Web
   monitoring service that allows you to do an instant site check. [Read more]

   Frequency: 30 mins
   Premium Services: Yes
   upported Protocols: HTTP
   Alert via: Email, ICQ, GTalk, SMS

7. Dotcom Monitors

   

   Services include Web Site Monitoring, Web Application and Business Transaction, Monitoring, Network Device Monitoring, Reporting, Analysis and Graphs, Alerts, Notifications and Escalation, Web Load Stress Test, Multi-User Support. [Read more]

   Frequency: 60 mins
   upported Protocols: HTTP, HTTPS, SMTP, POP3, DNS, FTP, SOAP, Video, Audio
   Premium Services: Yes

8. Site Probe

   

   SiteProbe is a tool that checks the status of
   your website hourly, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This gives the webmaster more time to be creative and improve his/her content instead of constantly worrying about whether or not the site is “up”. [Read more]

   Frequency: 60 mins
   Premium Services: Yes
   upported Protocols: HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, SMTP, and POP3

9. FreeBackup.info

   

   Enjoy the security of always having
   your website watched! [Read more]

   Frequency: N/A
   Premium Services: No
   upported Protocols: HTTP
   Alert via: Email, SMS

10. Killer Website Monitor

    

    The Killer Web site Monitor is FREE and easy to set up – you can be up and running in less than a minute! [Read more]

    Frequency: 1 Hour
    Premium Services: Yes
    upported Protocols: HTTP

11. Vertain

    Monitor the
    uptime and performance of
    your website, get alerted on all problems that effect users, such as availability, timeouts and content changes, before your users see them. No setup or maintenance cost, no scripts to record or maintain, no intrusive agents to install on your server. [Read more]

    Frequency: N/A
    Premium Services: No
    upported Protocols: HTTP
    Alert via: Email, SMS, Phone

12. Uptrends

    

    Uptrends was founded by the founders of OneStat.com, one of the largest global real-time web analytics providers with clients such as Cornell University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Thomas Cook, HP and FujiFilm. [Read more]

    Frequency: 30 mins
    Premium Services: Yes
    upported Protocols: N/A
    Alert via: Email, SMS, RSS

13. Uptime Party

    

    Server monitoring for your small business or personal web sites has never been easier. [Read more]

    Frequency: 60 mins
    Premium Services: Yes
    upported Protocols: HTTP

14. Service Uptime

    

    ServiceUptime is free remote website
    uptime monitoring designed to help you detect website downtime which can mean lost revenue and profits. [Read more]

    Frequency: 60 mins
    Premium Services: Yes
    upported Protocols: HTTP, HTTPS, POP3, DNS, IMAP, SMTP, IMAP, more

15. Internet Vista

    

    InternetVista is a monitoring infrastructure that watches over
    your website 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. If it is unavailable or malfunctioning, you are immediately notified by email and by SMS. [Read more]

    Frequency: 60 mins
    Premium Services: Yes
    upported Protocols: HTTP
    Alert via: Email, SMS

16. EControlPortal.Net

    Free web-based
    monitoring service that keeps a constant watch over your Internet services. [Read more]

    Frequency: 5 mins
    Premium Services: No
    upported Protocols: HTTP, HTTPS, PING, DNS, IMAP, POP3, RADIUS, NNTP, WEB CONTENT, AUTHORIZATION
    Alert via: Email

17. ServerMojo

    

    ServerMojo provides free
    monitoring service that will monitor your servers web, ping, dns, mysql and more and our system will check each one approximately every 15 minutes. [Read more]

    Frequency: 15 mins
    Premium Services: No
    upported Protocols: HTTP, DNS, MySQL, Ping
    Alert via: Email, SMS, Twitter, Jabber

18. UpPanel

    

    upPanel.com is a website
    monitoring service that watches your websites and alert you if one becomes unavailable. [Read more]

    Frequency: 30 mins
    Premium Services: Yes
    upported Protocols: HTTP/HTTPS, FTP, SSH, SMTP, MySQL, PING, more

19. WebsitePulse

    

    WebSitePulse is a web-based
    monitoring service that keeps a constant watch over your web site 24 hours per day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks per year. When it detects that your web site is not responding, it will send notifications to you at all of your designated “contacts” for that sites. [Read more]

    Frequency: 60 mins
    Premium Services: Yes
    upported Protocols:HTTP/HTTPS, FTP, SSH, SMTP, MySQL, PING, more

20. Basic State

    

    Free web site
    uptime monitor service that alerts you in 15 minutes. [Read more]

    Frequency: 15 mins
    Premium Services: No
    upported Protocols: HTTP, DNS, Server

Free Tools

Not too keen depending on Internet Services? Try monitor
your website status with these desktop applications.

• SDL Website Monitor – A collection of scripts that allow a website to be monitored and/or tested. The monitor allows you to record pages by clicking through your site from your browser. These can then be periodically checked to ensure they are available and correct.
• Zabbix – enterprise-class open source distributed monitoring solution.
  
• Website Monitoring – Monitor all your websites with this free
  website monitoring application. Sits in the system tray, alerts you with an icon notification and an email if
  your website is down or running slowly. Runs as a windows service so it will run even if not logged onto the machine.
• Google Desktop Gadget Website Monitor – Watch
  your website uptime/downtime right on your desktop.
  
• Nagios – Open Source host, service and network monitoring program.

Paid Services

Free is good, but paid services guarantees more options and checks
your website more frequent. If you are serious and want to get close to real-time getting notification when your site is down, we recommend these following services.

• Wormly – Trusted by notable clients like Nokia, SitePoints, etc. Wormly gets you started in less than 10 minutes with price as low as 9.00 monthly.
• AlertSite – Get a comprehensive view of your web site's performance and availability, with detailed breakdowns of DNS resolution, TCP connect, content download, redirect times and more.
• Pingdom – Monitor
  your website and servers and let you know right away when anything goes wrong. Get the facts and stay on top of things with Pingdom.
• OpenTracker – Opentracker is a web site tracking tool built for website analysis. Analyze website statistics and monitor visitors online & ‘real time'.
• WatchMouse – WatchMouse performs all server checks from a customer perspective, thus ensuring that your customers don't experience problems accessing your servers or services.

Other Solutions

Miscellaneous ways to track website downtime.

• Build a C# Web Site Monitor Service with Email and MSN Messenger Notification – If you prefer to develop the monitoring service instead of signing up with the above mentioned providers, this article is for you.
• Down For Everyone or Just Me? – An interestingly simple site to check if the website is down, or it's just you.

Web dev Tags:Monitor, website