5 Things You Need to Know About "Free" Website Monitoring Services

There are some who say the best things in life are free, and that is true to a point. Website monitoring service, however, is not one of those things. While there are a number of free website monitoring tools available on the Internet, just because they are free does not mean they are able to serve your needs. Before you sign up for a free website monitoring service, make sure you keep the following questions in mind.

How Are They Making Their Money?

No one goes into business for free. If a company is offering free website monitoring service, they are somehow making money from it, whether it be through something as simple as upselling of services that you really need for comprehensive website monitoring or something as devious as adware being installed onto your site or on your computer. Before you sign up with a free website monitoring service, make sure you understand exactly what you are signing up for and how it will impact your site and its performance, or even your computer and Internet browser.

How Far Will Free Take You?

Many of the companies that offer free website monitoring service do so to "hook' you onto their service, and before long you realize that the free service just isn't cutting it. Eventually, to ensure adequate monitoring of your site, you upgrade to their paid services. Unfortunately, these paid services may end up costing you more than it would have cost you to go with one of the more up-front services that provide plans and pricing information right within the pages of the site and don't claim to offer free services to lure you in.

How Will You Be Notified of Website Downtime?

How a service notifies you of website downtime is crucial when it comes to finding out about the downtime of your site in a timely manner. If the service only notifies you via email, you may not know about the downtime for hours, especially if the outage occurs late at night or in the wee hours of the morning. Furthermore, if your email server goes down with your website and that is the email you use to receive notifications, you won't even get the email until the situation has been resolved. You need to make sure you do business with a website monitoring service that provides you with notifications via text message and phone as well as email to ensure comprehensive monitoring of your site.

How Many Servers Will Be Monitoring Your Site?

As mentioned above, free website monitoring service is usually very limited. This could mean that only one server or multiple servers in one location are monitoring your site. What happens if there is a server outage, power failure, or other unforeseen event that takes the server or servers down? Your site is no longer being monitored until the situation is resolved and you may be facing downtime that your monitoring service can't notify you of. When it comes to website monitoring services, it is crucial that you choose a service that has multiple servers located in multiple locations monitoring your site at all time.

It Isn't a Cost, It's An Investment

The best way to look at website monitoring service is to view it as an investment. Like an insurance plan, you may not need it every day, but it is there to protect your site's profits should website downtime occur. In the world of website monitoring, you oftentimes get what you pay for. If you aren't paying anything for the monitoring of your site, chances are that your site isn't receiving comprehensive coverage. Never shop for website monitoring service based on price alone. Make sure that you look at the features and protection that the service offers. Chances are that the service will pay for itself in the long run by protecting your site from unnecessary loss of profits due to excessive website downtime.