How to Choose a Quality Website Monitor

If you own or operate a website, the uptime of that website is crucial to the success of your business. Every minute of downtime equates to lost profits and a loss of customer confidence. The problem is that you can’t be in front of your computer 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, checking the performance and uptime of your website. That’s where a quality website monitor comes into play. The question is, how do you know which website monitoring service is right for you? Regardless of what many people may believe, not all website monitoring services are created equal. Here are some tips to help you choose the right one.

Why Free Website Monitoring Services Aren’t Enough

Saving money is second nature to many of us. We want the best deal and if we can get it free, even better. What we have to remember is that in most cases, you get what you pay for. There are plenty of free website monitoring services on the Web. The problem is that these services usually don’t check your sites as frequently as they should and the method of contact is less than adequate. While a free website monitor can provide you with basic service, it can’t give you the comprehensive protection offered by a quality website monitor that you invest in.

Check the Method of Communication

There are many website monitoring services that only alert customers of an outage via email. What many people fail to recognize is that if your website goes down, chances are pretty good that your email service has gone down with it. If your email isn’t working, how are you going to get that email notification that the website monitor sends you? The fact is that you won’t. You won’t even be aware of the downtime until your site comes back up and your email comes back up with it. This is why you need website monitoring service that provides you with multiple forms of contact, including SMS text messaging and phone calls. Email is a great form of communication, but when it comes to website downtime, it’s not something you can rely on.

How Many Servers Are Used, and Where Are They?

It may seem like an odd question. After all, why should you care about where your website monitor has placed their servers? The truth is, if you don’t use a website monitoring service with servers placed strategically in locations across the globe, you really don’t know if the service is working effectively. What if there’s a power outage and a server goes out? What if your website monitor only has one server and something goes awry? You need to know you are using a website monitor that has multiple servers across the globe. If you choose a website monitor that offers anything less, you aren’t getting the protection you need.

How Easy Is It to Use?

When it comes to ease of use, website monitoring services can range from being very user friendly to being confusing and complicated. You don’t want to choose a website monitor that makes you install complicated software and perform tasks that take you hours to learn. A good website monitor does all of the work for you. You want to work with a website monitoring company that understands your time is valuable and should be spent on generating revenue for your business – not performing monitoring tasks that the service should do for you automatically.

The Perfect Fit

Remember, you need to know the moment your website goes down. Not after the issue has been resolved. You need a comprehensive website monitoring service that will be there for you when you need it. Website downtime is inevitable, but knowing when that downtime occurs allows you to jump into action and put your contingency plans into place. If you choose a website monitor that isn’t up to par, your website downtime can cost you money and customers – two things you just can’t afford to lose.