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Website Uptime Monitoring Systems

After a post on Twitter from Dannychoo regarding web site uptime monitoring systems, I thought I’d make a list of all the ones I know of, the services they offer and their pricing for future reference.



Service Found via Highest check frequency Monitor nodes Features Monthly 1 minute keyword HTTP checks Monthly 10 minute keyword HTTP checks Alerts
Keyword checking Unwanted text checking Basic Auth POP3 SMTP IMAP On server monitors 1 sites 5 sites 10 sites 1 sites 5 sites 10 sites SMS Phone Email HTTP RPC ICQ/MSN/AOL/Yahoo RSS
Wormly @pukupi 1 minute 6 Yes Yes Yes Yes Optional, Free $19 $19 $39 $19 $19 $39 40 Free ($0.18 subsequent) $0.40 per call Free Free ICQ + MSN No
Mon.Itor.Us 5 minutes Unknown No No No Yes Optional Free n/a n/a n/a Free (ad supported) Free (ad supported) Free (ad supported) No No Yes No No No
Pingdom 1 minute Unknown Yes Yes Yes No $9.95 $9.95 $12.45 $9.95 $9.95 $12.45 20 Free ($0.45 for next 20) No Yes No No No
Pingdom Gigrib 1 minute Unknown No No No No No Free (community supported) Free (community supported) Free (community supported) Free (community supported) Free (community supported) Free (community supported) No No Yes No No No
Montastic @tamir 10 minutes 2 No No No No No n/a n/a n/a Free Free Free No No Yes No No Yes
Host Tracker 1 minute 66 Yes No No No No $29.99 $29.99 $29.99 $4.99 $4.99 $29.99 10 Free (additional depend on network) No Yes No No No
Gomez @lennysan 1 minute 80 Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown No pricing on site No pricing on site No pricing on site No pricing on site No pricing on site No pricing on site Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown
Webmetrics @lennysan Unknown 95 Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown Optional No pricing on site No pricing on site No pricing on site No pricing on site No pricing on site No pricing on site Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown
Keynote @lennysan Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown Yes Unknown No pricing on site No pricing on site No pricing on site No pricing on site No pricing on site No pricing on site Yes No Yes No No No
Monitis 1 minute 5 Yes No No Yes Optional, Free $2.50 $12.50 $25 $1.50 $7.50 $15 $0.20 No Yes No Yes Yes
Site24x7 1 minute 14 Yes Yes Yes $14 for 15 minute checks No $12 $60 $120 $3 $15 $30 Yes No Yes No No Yes
Alertra 1 minute 11 Yes No No Yes No $144.00 $720.00 $1440.00 $17.10 $85.50 $171.00 $0.19 $0.29 Yes No MSN+Yahoo No
Hyperspin 1 minute 14 Yes No No Yes No $12 $54 $102 $2.50 $12.50 $23.75 $0.20 No Yes No No No
WebsiteHawk Joe McDonald 1 minute 2 Yes Yes Yes Yes No Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown Yes No Yes No No No
Panopta Steve 1 minute 20 No No No Yes No $15 $15 $15 $15 $15 $15 $0.20 (20 free) on $15 plan
Unlimited free otherwise
Yes Yes No “Coming soon” No
IP Patrol   1 minute 5 Yes Yes Yes Yes No £50 £250 £500 £7.40 £37.00 £74.00 10p No Yes No No No
Specto @mrtorrent Runs on Linux and provides monitoring of local and remote sites

Sorry, I know the table isn’t exactly pretty, but it was only meant to be a 20 minute piece of work compiling the information and formatting it…

10 Comments

  1. http://www.websitehawk.com is another one

    as low as 1 minute interval
    2 nodes
    keyword checking – yes
    unwanted text checking -yes
    basic auth = yes
    pop3/smtp/imap = yes
    any alert mail/sms/etc =yes

    3 free url monitors
    .50 a monitor for premium monitors

  2. Some good facts in this one as well – like the comparisons. We are contemplating launching a UK based service along these lines (with a few differences – but nothing earth shattering) – mainly because we already have the product ready from in-house use.

    My last sweep of research showed that it was fairly pointless because the market space is quite chocca, and there are some good (and very cheap or even free) alternatives.. so curious as to what might be a killer feature.

    Oh well. As ever – more market research required!

    • Killer features? Well, I would personally like:
      * At least 2 checking nodes on different networks to avoid false positives (there’s nothing worse than being woken up at 3am for a false alert)
      * Ideally 1 node per continent/major backbone so we could view potential latency issues
      * SMS and email alerts are a must
      * Ideally customisable Twitter alerts (“We’ve just been notified that service X is done, we’re looking at it”) for customer reassurance
      * Which then goes hand-in-hand with RSS, HTTP POST/RPC and public status pages
      * Cheap (Alertra, whilst well known, is extremely expensive: Wormly seems to have an ideal price point
      * Keyword monitoring (it’s alright telling me if my page is just not reachable, but if it doesn’t show text from my MySQL database, then it’s broken…)

      Hope it helps!

      • Steve Steve

        Take a look at Panopta (http://www.panopta.com) – they have a number of the features you’re looking for, in particular excellent outage verification. We’ve never had a false alert with them yet!

  3. Richy,

    Nice list. I would like to point out the following corrections to the Site24x7 entry in the list.

    – Number of monitoring nodes is 14.
    – keyword checks is ‘yes’
    – Unwanted text checking is ‘yes’
    – Basic auth is ‘yes’

    Arun
    Site24x7

    • Thanks for the correction Arun – I’ve updated the table.

      It is a shame that providers don’t provide a simple “comparison feature table” showing exactly what they offer at what prices: this isn’t a “dig” at your company, but just generally – some say “We offer voice notifications”: but no price indications, some just say “Our monitoring network” without the number of nodes – and some force you to sign up to find out basic pricing!

  4. Hey Richy.. nice comparison table! You may also be interested in EZ Website Monitoring (http://www.ezwebsitemonitoring.com/) – it’s kind of unique as it provides both uptime monitor and SEO tracking together in one service. Check it out if you have time and even sign up for the beta if you want to help it improve. We have 3 monitoring nodes at the moment and are adding more.. our goal is to have at least 10 monitoring nodes within 6 months.

  5. monitoring uptime monitoring uptime

    Nice post. Thanks for sharing it. Better if you can monitor website rank, position and uptime in one place!

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