Building a website with an attractive design isn’t enough. Ensuring that it’s up and free from errors like 502 Bad Gateway is also essential. However, website monitoring can be a complicated task, especially if you have to do it manually.
To ease the process, consider using a website monitoring tool. It checks your site performance automatically and alerts you if an issue arises. There are many uptime monitoring tools with different features, testing locations, and plans.
In this article, we’ll cover the nine most popular options so you can choose the right one for your website.
1. Pingdom
Pingdom has become the website monitoring tool used by many major brands, such as Netflix and Spotify. It has comprehensive features, including website, NGINX server, and Java application monitoring. Pingdom has five monitoring location regions, including North America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific.
Key features:
- Well-designed reports. Although Pingdom comes with many features that may confuse beginners, it applies colors and icons to draw attention to important metrics.
- Solutions by industry. Pingdom offers tailored solutions for specific industries, such as retail, entertainment, and web development.
- Complete resources. The tool offers technical documentation, webinars, and infographics.
Price:
From $10/month with a 30-day free trial.
2. Datadog
Datadog comes with various tools, including real user, infrastructure, and database monitoring. It also provides other features, such as log and incident management.
Datadog’s managed spots are available in three regions: America, Asia Pacific, and Europe. You also have the option to create a private location.
Key features:
- Flexible pricing. Datadog offers a subscription combining several products. However, it’s possible to pay for only the features you need.
- Machine learning-based monitoring. It builds automated workflow and directly pinpoints the root cause for quick problem resolutions.
- Over 450 built-in integrations. Datadog supports collaboration, cost optimization, developer tools, and more.
Price:
Freemium, with premium plans starting at $15/host/month.
3. Sematext
Many Fortune 100 companies like Walmart and Microsoft trust Sematext. It’s an all-in-one monitoring solution covering RUM, transaction tracing, infrastructure monitoring, synthetics, and log management. Sematex also offers API, JVM, and database monitoring.
Sematext provides worldwide testing locations from the USA, Germany, and Singapore.
Key features:
- Sematext Experience. Sematex analyzes various metrics in real-time, including individual sessions and Core Web Vitals.
- Single-page applications (SPA) support. Users can monitor React, Angular, and Vue.js application performance.
- Consulting services. Sematext provides search and big data analytics consulting, such as ELK Stack and Solr.
Price:
From $9/month with a 14-day free trial.
4. Uptime.com
Uptime.com offers several features, including real user, web, and synthetic monitoring. The tool also makes it possible to create public and private website status pages to notify clients about problems.
The monitoring locations depend on the selected plan, but Uptime has worldwide test points from the USA to Singapore and Australia.
Key features:
- Top-notch technical support. Uptime.com offers customer support that is available 24/7.
- Easy-to-use UI. Customize the monitoring dashboards to match your needs. Uptime.com will provide you with in-depth monitoring reports of your website performance.
- Less false alarms. Thanks to its Uptimebots, Uptime’s monitoring service only sends necessary notifications regarding website downtime and performance alerts.
Price: From $19/month with a 21-day free trial.
5. Site24x7
Site24x7 is a comprehensive solution covering everything from website to server and application monitoring. It also includes RUM and cloud monitoring to troubleshoot performance on cloud computing solutions, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, and VMware.
This monitoring tool features a global network of servers in over 110 geographical locations, from North America to Australia.
Key features:
- Complete visualization. Site24x7 provides an in-depth UI with maps, graphs, and color-coded statuses suitable for pros.
- Extensive third-party integrations. The tool supports Zapier and PagerDuty for notifications and Jira for bug tracking.
- Mobile app. Users can track uptime and performance on the go and receive instant alerts via push notifications.
Price:
From $9/month with a 30-day free trial.
6. UptimeRobot
UptimeRobot offers six primary services: website, SSL, ping, port, cron job, and keyword monitoring. It also provides advanced features, like custom HTTP requests and a status page for your domain.
This monitoring tool has 28 servers in ten countries, including Singapore, the USA, and Germany.
Key features:
- Simplicity. UptimeRobot doesn’t come with many features, so its interface is relatively simple, letting users find uptime status and other necessary information quickly.
- Multiple alerts. The tool supports many communication methods to notify you when downtime occurs, including Discord or Slack messages and voice calls.
- Incident updates. Users can inform customers about maintenance and other incidents via email.
Price:
Freemium, with plans starting at $7/month.
7. Checkly
With its API and E2E monitoring features, Checkly is the best monitoring solution for developers.
Checkly uses AWS to power its monitoring infrastructure. Therefore, the number of its testing locations depends on the AWS data centers. Currently, Checkly operates from 21 locations worldwide, including São Paulo, Hong Kong, and Milan.
Key features:
- Customization. Make a custom URL and payload body in your infrastructure or third-party provider using Checkly’s webhooks.
- Developer tool integrations. The tool supports Terraform, Javascript, Prometheus, and GitHub.
- Headless recorder. Checkly’s Chrome extension allows users to create Puppeteer and Playwright E2E testing scripts.
Price:
Freemium, with plans starting at $1.20/10k API check runs.
8. StatusCake
This London-based company offers services for uptime, page, domain, server, and SSL monitoring. It has 43 test locations in 30 countries, like the USA, South Africa, and India.
Key features:
- Custom reporting tool. You’ll see an overall performance at a glance on the dashboard. It’s possible to set up daily, weekly, or monthly customized reports and forward them to your team or clients.
- Short test intervals. Depending on your plan, you can check your server as often as every five seconds. StatusCake lets you choose a test interval that suits you.
- Page security. StatusCake offers status page protection by applying a password or listing allowed IP addresses.
Price:
Freemium, with plans starting at $20.41/month.
9. Montastic
Montastic doesn’t offer a comprehensive list of features like the aforementioned monitoring tools – it only provides website uptime monitoring. That said, its simplicity makes it the best solution for beginner bloggers and small business owners.
Key features:
- Free uptime monitoring tool. Monitor the uptime of up to nine URLs every 30 minutes for free. Unfortunately, Montastic doesn’t include performance notifications.
- Google login. Montastic works with Google accounts so you can skip the registration process.
- Embeddable status. Users can embed service statuses on their websites, apps, or helpdesks to let customers know about the website performance.
Price:
Freemium, with plans starting at $10/month.
Conclusion
Installing a monitoring tool helps check your website availability and performance. However, the abundance of options can be confusing.
Here are our top nine uptime monitoring tools with their most prominent features:
- Pingdom. Offers specific monitoring plans for different industries.
- Datadog. Integrates AI for automatic workflows.
- Sematext. Provides consulting services.
- Uptime.com. Sends fewer false alarms.
- Site24x7. Has over 110 testing locations worldwide.
- Montastic. Great for beginners due to its simple functionality.
- UptimeRobot. Lets users email customers when incidents happen.
- Checkly. The best monitoring tool for developers.
- StatusCake. Provides five-second test intervals.
We hope this article has helped you choose the best monitoring solution for your website and improve your website performance.
