After having some site performance and availability problems, I began investigating ways to monitor web servers. There are lots of sites offering various services, here’s what I’ve settled on.
1. Broadband Reports offers both free and paid services. Their Line Monitoring tool provides a continuous response time graph shown below by sending out pings every 10 minutes. The Line Monitoring tool costs approximately $1 per week. It also provide the ability to setup a HTTP ping to a specific URL.
2. mon.itor.us is a free web site monitor tool. As far as simplicity in setup, mon.itor.us couldn’t be easier. Their website serves as a dashboard with drag-and-drop modules for each of your sites. These modules can also be included in your OS X dashboard, Google Personal, Netvibes, etc. Another nice feature is the ability to be notified when your sites are unavailable. Alerts can be sent to an email address, IM account, or cellphone. The main problem with mon.itor.us is in its ping frequency, which is currently between 30-45 minutes. According to their parent site Monitis they are rolling out a Bronze plan ($10 per month) that will ping every 5 minutes and provide some advanced features.
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