Website Monitoring Services – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

More and more website owners are realizing the importance of a website monitoring service in today’s ecommerce era. These services notify you immediately when your site goes down, checking availability 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This is a task that must be done to ensure maximum website uptime, but it’s impossible for a website operator to do this themselves. Website monitoring services provide peace of mind for a small fee and most of the companies who use these services think of the service as an investment – an investment that definitely provides a return. The problem is that not all website monitors are created equal. How can you tell the good from the bad? Here are some tips to help.

What is the Method of Notification?

You see advertisements for free website monitoring services all over the place. The problem is that these “free” services only communicate with you via email. That’s a significant problem when you consider the fact that it’s not uncommon for your site’s email to go down when you experience a site outage. This means you aren’t even notified of the outage until your email is back up and running again – which means your site is back up and running with it. When every minute could mean lost profits, this method of communication isn’t sufficient. You need a website monitoring service that will not only provide you with email alerts, but will provide you with SMS text messages and phone calls as well. Only then will you know for sure that you will be notified the moment your site goes down and not after the problem has been resolved.

Where Are the Servers Located?

When it comes to the inequality of website monitoring services, the number of servers and location of the servers is a prime example. Let’s say your website monitoring service has only one server and the power goes out at the server location? Your website isn’t being protected until the power goes back on. In the case of a severe storm or outage, that could mean days. You need a website monitoring service that has multiple servers across various locations. The more servers and the more spread out they are, the better.

How Often Do They Check Your Site?

Another thing to look for is how often your website monitoring service checks or “pings” your site. If it’s only every 15 minutes, your site could technically go down for 15 minutes before you even realized it. Good website monitors can check your site every minute if you choose. Look for a website monitoring service that checks your site frequently so you won’t lose precious time during a website outage.

The Cheapest Isn’t Necessarily the Best

There is indeed such a thing as a good deal, but remember that cheapest isn’t always best. You want a monitoring service that is priced reasonably, but still provides you with a quality level of service. It’s all about balance. You don’t want to overpay, but you don’t want a service that is so cheap they can’t even afford to properly monitor your website if they wanted to.

Whenever you’re looking for a quality website monitoring service, keep the above tips in mind. By adhering to the above advice, you can ensure that you select a service that provides you with the level of quality you deserve without charging you an arm and a leg.