Can anyone recommend a good website monitoring tool

[Alex]

I'm looking for a tool to monitor whether my websites/servers are online and to send me an email/sms if they are down.

I've been looking into AreMySitesUp , Montastic and a few others.

Can anyone vouch for any of these? I realize there are a lot of options both free and paid and I need help choosing one! I've created free accounts at both of the above and so far so good.

Anyone share their experiences / suggestions please!

Thanks!

Alex

 

[ViviTheMage]

free, or paid?

huge difference in quality of service.

 

[ViviTheMage]

Either way, this one's OK for free :

http://host-tracker.com/

I have never tried their paid services.

This one looks nice :

http://www.status2k.com/

I have heard good things about that one, I just haven't gotten down to it to pay it. I use my own home brew uptime report.

 

[Alex]

Originally posted by: ViviTheMage
free, or paid?

huge difference in quality of service.

Good question. We are debating whether to develop our own solution or use something that already exists. For that reason, ideally it would either be free or not that expensive.

Could you tell me a bit more about the difference in quality of service you mentioned please?

Thanks!

Alex

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Pay a hobo to constantly hit refresh. It costs you a couple of dimes, tops.

 

[manlymatt83]

Nagios

 

[Alex]

Originally posted by: Atomic Playboy
Pay a hobo to constantly hit refresh. It costs you a couple of dimes, tops.

Thanks buddy, if all else fails I just might.

 

[spidey07]

What do you want it to check? If tcp port 80 is open? That you're getting a HTTP 200 back? Or do you want it to do a more sophisticated check where it computes a hash of the entire page and makes sure it gets the same page back everytime, ie, you're actually getting the page you want?

 

[Alex]

Originally posted by: spidey07
What do you want it to check? If tcp port 80 is open? That you're getting a HTTP 200 back? Or do you want it to do a more sophisticated check where it computes a hash of the entire page and makes sure it gets the same page back everytime, ie, you're actually getting the page you want?

I just want to check if I'm getting a HTTP 200 back. Basically, if the website and database are pinging then I'm good to go!

 

[a123456]

I have no idea about the sites that you listed in the OP, but I will second that Nagios will do the job fine. It can do tons of monitoring, including HTTP requests and then respond with emails/SMS if something is down.

 

[Goosemaster]

Originally posted by: manlymatt83
Nagios

This. Or if I have needed a drop-in solution offsite I have used http://site24x7.com/index.html

 

[EGGO]

Google Analytics is great.

 

[Zee]

yeah google is free.

another free and ghetto way is to set up a script or something to send yourself an email every 30 mins or something and when the emails stop coming you know something is wrong

 

[Alex]

google analytics won't send me an email if my site goes down

 

[Server Monitor]

I know this is an old thread, but in case anyone else discovers this thread while searching the internet for website monitoring software, we thought it would be useful to let you know about ours. We are a reputable UK software house and our server monitoring software is called Cyclops. It offers unlimited checks and SMS/email alerts for downtime, helping you maximise your site's uptime.

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And although this post is blowing our own trumpet, we do intend to generally contribute to the forum and to other threads!