Free Uptime Monitoring for your Site with these Tools
If you own a website or a blog, you will probably be interested in knowing when, for one reason or the other, it suffers downtime. There are several tools out there that you can use for uptime monitoring. This article looks at two of them; the Downtime Monitoring tool that is part of the Jetpack Plugin (for WordPress), and Uptime Robot, a tool that is available free of charge for up to 50 monitors.
For WordPress Websites, Use Jetpack’s Downtime Monitoring
- If you have a WordPress website, you can easily monitor your site’s up and down times using the Jetpack plugin. I have been using the plugin on my own site for a while now.
- The good thing is that the plugin sends me an email each time my site goes down. This is important, since it allows you to get in touch with your web host in order to have the problem resolved. Remember that in this age of website monetization, any time that your site spends off air translates into lost revenue.
- My own site is hosted by InterServer, a host that has, during the time that I have been using it, otherwise been great. However, the Jetpack plugin has informed me twice that my site was down.
- Both times it was for less than 10 minutes. The other time I was actually seated on my computer and could open my site, which is rather strange. Oh well!
- In order to launch uptime monitoring using the Jetpack plugin, all that you need to do is install the plugin, go into its Dashboard and scroll down to the “Downtime Monitoring,” Option. Click on Settings and you will be taken into your WordPress.com account.
- Here, you can play around with a number of settings, including uptime monitoring.
Uptime Robot
Uptime Robot is another of the great tools that you can use to carry out uptime monitoring on your site. The great thing about this tools is that it has a free version that you can use to keep track of how your site is performing. Your blog can be set for monitoring at five minute intervals. Signing up takes only a few seconds and after confirming your email, you will be good to go. After signing in, you will be taken to your Dashboard, where you can add new monitors. The free account allows you to have up to 50 monitors. Uptime Robot comes with the following features;
- Multiple Types, including HTTP(s), ping, port and keywords
- Alerts via email, SMS, Twitter, push, Slack, HipChat and more
- Downtime is verified from multiple locations
- Share statistics with your teammates and/visitors
Conclusion
There are many more tools that can be used for uptime monitoring on your site. The great thing is that most of them come with free versions, which means that you can try them out, before signing up for more features with the paid versions. If you are interested in checking your WordPress website’s traffic in your Dashboard, here is an article that explains how you go about doing it. You can also read about WordPress Malware removal in this article.