An unreliable, semi-broken and irresponsible website is a great way to lose tips and visitors – no matter how aesthetically pleasing or well-designed, the visual elements are.
Over the last decade, we have seen more initiatives to provide faster internet to regions of the world than it has ever had before. With online communities growing and more people embracing online shopping, it is now more important than ever that your site is trusted.
One way to achieve this is by using uptime and downtime monitoring tools. This guide will examine the best ways to get alerts when something goes wrong and your website crashes.
Why Website Uptime Monitoring Is Important?
Downtime is bound to occur from time to time. However, the goal is to minimize it. The longer it takes, the more traffic and potential clients you lose. A malfunctioning Web site also damages your credibility and reputation. People can associate the unreliability of your website with your real-world products or services.
With web developers charging an average of $ 200 per hour, high quality websites can be expensive to build and maintain. However, it is often worth the investment. However, an unreliable website can confuse you. Instead of attracting more customers, it may attract them. This can lead to lost income.
An uptime monitoring solution can help you prevent or reduce these losses. It checks if your website is up and functioning and notifies you if it does not. This allows you to troubleshoot the issue and get your website up and running again as soon as you are notified. The most common issues behind downtime for a website include:
- Server faults;
- Network disruption;
- Electricity failure;
- Traffic spikes;
- cyber-attacks;
- Domain name issues;
- Deployment of erroneous web application;
- Increased server loads;
- Resolving DNS Issues;
- Human error.
So, you need to use a reliable tool that detects downtime or any break related to your website as soon as they occur. They are essential tools for web designers, developers and network administrators. However, not all of them are built the same way. So how do you identify the best uptime monitoring tools?
Essential Features Uptime Monitoring Tools
Uptime monitoring tools typically detect interference by running network tests such as pings and trackbacks. You could practically monitor the uptime of your website by constantly running these tests yourself.
However, this is not an effective way to monitor the uptime of your website. A comprehensive Uptime monitoring tool will automatically monitor the uptime of your Web site in the background. It will then alert you through various channels as soon as it detects that your Website may be down.
In addition, high quality uptime monitoring solutions typically provide additional information on downtime for a website and its performance. These tools usually include tools, status pages, badges, exportable records, etc., to help you keep track of the overall health of your site.
9 Best Features of Uptime Monitoring Solution
The ideal uptime monitoring tool or service should include:
- security features of the website that alerts and denies potential cyber-attacks;
- 24/7 uninterrupted background monitoring of the Web site;
- Multichannel alerts (email, SMS, push notifications, instant messaging, social media, etc.);
- Report generation;
- 24/7 customer support available through various channels (email, telephone, chat, etc.);
- Be able to monitor multiple websites and proxies simultaneously;
- Offer insights and suggestions to improve the performance of your website;
- Be affordable;
- High adaptability should allow you to choose which features to enable and disable.
Another optional feature to look out for is public status pages that your clients can access to find out if all your services are up and running. GetWeave is a great example of this. The Web site has a well-organized system status page where customers can check if all Weave services are working.
However, you can use the above information as a buying guide when evaluating potential uptime monitoring tools. The rest of this guide will give you some suggestions on what tools you should use for your website.
3 Uptime Monitoring Tools for Best Website
Some of the best uptime monitoring tools for website downtime alerts include:
1. Trends
Uptrends is not just a downtime detection tool; it is a complete web performance monitoring solution. It will notify you as soon as it detects any disruption to the performance of your website. It features highly customizable checks. For example, you can set performance check limits for load times. Uptrends will notify you immediately if your website takes too long to load.
You can also configure it from the locations you want it to monitor your website. Uptrends will then point you to where your Web site is experiencing performance reductions in real life.
The service uses multiple means of communication to send notifications to users: email, phone calls and SMS. Or you can download one of Uptrend’s mobile apps and receive push notifications. Additionally, you can integrate Uptrends with messaging and communication applications such as PagerDuty, Slack, and Microsoft Teams.
Another notable feature of Uptrend is its ability to emulate the performance of your website across multiple browsers. It runs Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge on its servers. So you can compare how your website runs on these web browsers without installing them on your servers or PC.
Uptrends provides users with various charts, reports, and graphs to help identify sudden spikes or declines. Waterfall reports show the total page load from initial application to final download. This allows you to compare the performance history of the website by element. It comes with three price plans whose cost depends on the number of monitors you want. Starting at $ 16.21 (as of this writing) the Startup Plan is the most affordable.
2. Oh Dear
Oh Dear is a slightly cheaper option than Uptrends, with the most affordable plan starting at $ 12 per month (time of writing). However, while Uptrends offers a 30-day free trial, Oh Dear only provides a 12-day trial period. However, the Oh Dear interface is much cleaner and minimal.
Because Oh Dear runs servers in different parts of the globe, it can track how your website is performing in different regions. Oh Dear will scan through your Web site and index all pages. If it detects any issues, it will alert you immediately.
Oh Dear also has a continuous certificate monitoring function. This feature can be very useful for site owners who are concerned about the security of their websites. It will verify the expiration dates of your SSL certificate and notify you of any changes.
The Oh Dear public status page allows your clients to track the availability of your website.
Oh Dear uses email text messages and SMS to notify site owners of any issues. Integration with communication and social media functions such as Telegram, Discord, Slack, Microsoft Teams, etc. Ó Dear ensures that messages are as detailed and easy to use. This makes it easier to troubleshoot and find the root of a problem. Oh Dear is a worthwhile alternative to Uptrends.
3. WP Umbrella
Umbrella WP is a little different from the previous entries. It is intended to help WordPress multisite users manage and monitor. As such, it is much more detailed in its approach to website uptime monitoring. Again, as the main function of the uptime monitoring tool, it offers a real-time alert system that will contact you via email, SMS, Slack, etc.
WP Umbrella employs a simple minimal UI. The main screen consists of a dashboard that allows you to view all your WordPress websites. By default, this panel consists of four columns: Location, UpTime, Speed, and Issues.
WP Umbrella will alert you of any outdated or erroneous plugins or themes. While it does not offer dedicated public status pages, it does have a client reports generation feature. You can automatically send these reports to your various subscribers or clients when your website is down.
Umbrella WP is the most affordable option on this list. Users are charged $ 1.99 per month (at the time of writing) for each monitored website. In addition, WP Umbrella offers a 14 day trial and does not require credit card details. It’s a great choice for anyone running a WordPress website or two.
Conclusion
This guide has only explored three possible uptime monitoring solutions. Not only will they help you detect downtime, they can also help you identify why your site may be slowing down.
These solutions are a great place to start. But there are many other options coming on the market all the time. You may find that this is the first step in converting more leads and reducing your bounce rate.
