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 | 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
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
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!
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!
I’ve also been told about http://www.ippatrol.co.uk/ .
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!
I’ve just heard about http://www.serverdensity.com/ – 10GBP/15USD per month per server with on server monitoring.
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.
Nice post. Thanks for sharing it. Better if you can monitor website rank, position and uptime in one place!