How to Tell the Good from the Bad When Choosing a Website Monitoring Service

When it comes to choosing a website monitoring service for your business's website, you want to make sure you choose one you can trust. If you don't choose the right website monitor, you may think you are protected from excess downtime when, in reality, you aren't really protected any more than you would be had you not implemented any website monitoring at all. Here are some things to look for when choosing a website monitoring service for your business website.

How Does the Service Notify You?

Different website monitoring services notify customers of website downtime in different ways. If a company only notifies you via email, what happens if your email server goes down with your site server? If this is the case, you won't be notified of the downtime until the issue has been resolved, which means you won't be able to do anything to fix the issue while the site is down because you won't know about it. A quality website monitoring service will offer an array of notification options including SMS text messages and phone calls.

How Many Servers are in Place and Where Are They?

If a website monitoring service only has one server, what happens if the server goes down? If the server goes down, your site isn't being monitored during the outage. If the site has multiple servers, you need to know where they are located. If they are in the same location and one server goes down, it isn't an issue because the other servers will pick up the slack. If, however, there is a complete power failure in the area, the servers will all go down if they are in the same location. That is why you need to choose a website monitoring service that has multiple servers in multiple locations.

How Often is Your Website Checked?

Website monitoring services offer different intervals in which your website can be checked for performance issues and downtime. Since every second counts when it comes to downtime and profits, you want to make sure your site is being checked at least every 60 seconds. Some services even have advanced technology in place that allows them to check a site every few seconds. Make sure the service you choose monitors your site frequently enough so you are notified as downtime as soon as possible.

How Does the Website Monitoring Service Check for Downtime?

Most website monitoring services check a site's name servers on a constant basis. If, however, the service caches the name server lookups instead of actually checking them, the time it takes for the service to actually detect an outage can vary greatly depending on your site's time-to-live (TTL). You don't want to wait hours or possibly even days to be notified by your website monitoring service. That is why you need to choose one that does not rely on caching for monitoring purposes.

Is Software Required?

Some website monitoring services require you to install software in order to monitor your website. If you do not want to deal with the hassle of installing software on your site, you need to work with a service that will either install the software for you or a service that does not require the installation of any software. Not all website owners are technologically savvy enough to handle a software installation. If you are one of them, this should be a primary concern for you.

Not All Website Monitoring Services Are Created Equal

As you can see, not all website monitoring services are created equal. You need to make sure you choose one that offers quality services that can actually protect you from downtime and maximize your site's profitability.