Minimize website downtime using website monitoring services

You know how damaging website downtime can be to your online business. That’s why you put countless hours into finding the right hosting provider and the perfect hosting plan for your business’s online presence. Now that your site has been properly programmed, everything is running seamlessly, and your site is live and online, you can sit back and stop worrying. Right? Actually this couldn’t be further from the truth. Without a quality website monitoring service in place keeping an eye on your website 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, your site isn’t actually protected from dreaded website downtime nearly as much as you may think.

But You Picked the Perfect Hosting Plan! You may have spent time, and I mean a lot of time, finding a hosting company that promised the highest amount of uptime and then you spent even more time figuring out which hosting plan would best serve your website. If you think this is going to completely protect you from website downtime, you are sorely mistaken.

The first thing you need to realize is that the uptime guarantee that your hosting provider promised you only applies to unplanned downtime. It does not include downtime caused by things like server upgrades and maintenance. Furthermore, the hosting provider never promised to notify you when unplanned downtime did occur, so even if you are prepared for the worst and have failsafe practices in place, you won’t know you need to use them unless you have partnered with a website monitoring service to let you know the minute your site goes down.

Another thing to consider is that even if your hosting provider’s server is up and running without a problem to be seen, this doesn’t mean that your website is functioning properly, or that it’s even working at all. There are many things that can go wrong with a site, such as a third-party script not running properly or a coding problem wreaking havoc. This can take an entire site down and it will have nothing to do with your hosting provider at all. When this happens, you need a third-party website monitoring service to notify you that something has gone awry with your site and, better yet, what exactly has gone wrong, so you can go to work to fix it as quickly as possible.

How Do You Pick the Best Website Monitoring Service? Since you had spent so much time finding the best hosting provider and hosting plan, it would only make sense that you would put just as much effort into finding the right website monitoring service. Exactly what do you want to look for when choosing such a service for your website?

First, make sure that the website monitoring service checks your website at set intervals, as often as every minute (or less), so you know about any issues as soon as they present themselves. You also want to choose a website monitoring service that doesn’t just notify you via , because that’s not going to do you a bit of good if your goes down with your website. Make sure you partner with a website monitoring service that will notify you via , phone, and/or SMS text message.

You should also look for a service that offers added features, such as uptime reports. The more features and services a website monitoring company provides, the better you will be able to see the big picture when it comes to your website’s downtime, including what problems you need to address and what changes you may need to make.

Most importantly, never shop for a website monitoring service based on price alone. While there are many companies out there offering “free” monitoring service, they are usually little more than bare-bone services that are meant to draw you in, “hook” you, and get you to pay more than you would have initially had you not been looking to gain something for nothing when you set out to select such a service.

When looking at the cost of these services, remember they are one of the few that can pay for themselves over time. What little you pay for the monitoring of your site is likely going to be returned to you tenfold or more by reducing the profit loss that your company would have faced without this valuable service in place.

Alertra is a leading provider of website monitoring and alerting services. Alertra’s monitoring stations are spread across the world. It monitors the availability, performance and security of Internet-connected devices. Alertra’s website monitoring features include timely alert notifications and access to detailed reporting. Since April, 2000, Alertra provided monitoring services to more than 10,000 businesses and other organizations. To know more about Alertra, visit Alertra’s monitoring stationsabout Alertra