Question

What are people using for website monitoring services?

I am referring to a service that I can configure specific hits to my site to monitor if the site is up, and how fast it is responding to the requests.

I am looking for an external service, that will hit my server from several locations, and will provide me notification if the site does not respond within certain tolerances.

It can be free or paid.

Answer 1

Here's a breakdown of the major players in the external performance monitoring space:

Top Shelf

1. Webmetrics.com - largest network, great monitoring technology, fun UI
2. Keynote.com - focused on mobile, long time player in the space
3. Gomez.com - lots of different products, product life cycle focus

Middle

1. AlertSite.com - does a lot of things, nothing extremely well
2. Pingdom.com - popular in the web 2.0 world
3. site24x7.com - owned by zoho, cheap

Low End

1. mon.itor.us
2. siteuptime.com
3. dotcom-monitor.com

What you need to look for in deciding between the various options:

1. If you want to monitor a transaction, versus just a URL, you should try out the scripting technology to understand how easy/complicated it is to set up your monitoring.
2. The monitoring network, how many locations around the world you want to get performance metrics from.
3. The alerting options, how configurable the thresholds/escalations are.
4. The reporting, how useful the various reports/graphs are, and how much you can drill down into the nitty gritty.

Answer 2

My personal preference is Pingdom. They've got several servers around the world, and the data is aggregated before sending you a "down" alert. They also provide information on uptime and reachability, so you can determine how many "9"s you're getting.

Answer 3

For transaction and performance monitoring, I found AlertFox even more powerful than Keynote systems. When I checked (April 09) it was the only service that can monitor Flash and Java applet performance for a fair price.

Alertfox does only one thing (transaction monitoring) and it does that very well.

Answer 4

http://sucuri.net

Focus is on integrity/availability monitoring, not on performance. But can be useful..

*free, alerts via email, sms and twitter, unlimited too...

Answer 5

WebWatchBot (www.webwatchbot.com) is another option for those wanting to monitor the end user experience via transaction monitoring (good for keeping an eye on response time) and individual components of the infrastructure such as severs and databases. We've all been bitten by a server that shows "up" while the application is hung. Combination of transaction and component monitoring prevents this and expedites troubleshooting. Free trial and reasonably priced pro version that easily scales to the enterprise level.

Answer 6

we are using gomez (www.gomez.com) as a large website. there you can check the performance with good statistics from several locations all over the world.

Answer 7

Have a look at http://mon.itor.us/ It has a number of interesting graphics options for http and other response times. Plus is measures from 3 different locations for better coverage. You can also setup messaging on downs and create rss alerts.

It also aggregates the tests so if 500 people decide to use the service to monitor your site you only get pinged once.

Answer 8

I've used Keynote in the past. Wasn't particularly cheap, but it can monitor from many places, send alerts and so on.

You can test, measure and improve your service levels in real-time from more than 2,400 measurement computers and mobile devices in more than 240 locations and 160 metropolitan areas.

Answer 9

basicstate.com

• Free
• Alerts by email & SMS
• Historical data and graphs
• Unlimited sites

Answer 10

http://100pulse.com one of the best monitoring service i ever come up with. You can get Website Monitoring service with 5 minute interval, Free Instant alert when ever your site goes down, No software installation needed, Free Periodical Reports depends on user selection, Easy way to analyze website performance through graphs and data.