9 Best Free Website Downtime Monitoring Services
It is crucial to monitor the availability of your website if you do not want your readers/customers to go away.
Whether it is an online business or a blog, website downtime can hurt your website's online presence.
It is also helpful to know if you picked the right server for your website if you are aware of the downtime. If your server is down for a long time at regular intervals, you need to identify what’s wrong with the server (or the configuration).
Honestly, it is not always a malicious actor or an issue with a technology that you use; sometimes, it's just the server that's at fault.
Overall, downtime motoring services will help you identify these issues, and prompt you to resolve them at the earliest.
So, what are the best free downtime monitoring services? Here, I shall highlight some of the best options that you can get started for free.
Top Free Downtime Monitoring Services
There are various self-hosting tools for downtime monitoring. You can deploy them and maintain the services.
However, if you don't want to take the burden of maintaining another service, you can opt for managed downtime services. Though they have premium offering, these services also offer free tier which is often sufficient for downtime monitoring.
If you need advanced monitoring features, you can opt for the premium plans. Keep that in mind when exploring the options here.
1. StatusCake
- Uptime monitors
- Up to 30 seconds test interval (premium)
- Page speed monitor
- Domain monitor
- SSL monitor
- Server monitor (premium)
- Alerts
- Status page (separate offering)
- No status page
StatusCake lets you monitor websites, analyze page speed, monitor SSL, and offers advanced features with paid plans. You can even monitor your domain and the server with the premium upgrade.
With the free version, you get up to 10 uptime monitors and a minimum of 5-minute intervals between checks.
You can also get important alerts through third-party app integration options available. If you want a basic monitoring service with the ability to help you keep an eye on the performance of your site and the SSL, StatusCake should be an excellent option for free.
2. Better Uptime
- Uptime monitors
- Up to 30 seconds test (premium)
- Status page (premium)
- On-call scheduling (premium)
- Alerts
- Incident management
- No page speed monitor
Better Uptime is a popular option among businesses, considering it helps you replace multiple tools (Status page, Incident management, and uptime monitoring) with a single product. It also provides you screenshots and error logs for the downtime.
With the free version, you get limited to 10 uptime monitors, 3-minute test checks, and free email alerts.
It does not offer you any extras like SSL and page speed monitoring, but you get a faster test interval compared to the competition.
3. Uptime Kuma
- Uptime monitors
- Up to 20 seconds test interval
- Status pages
- Alerts
Uptime Kuma is an interesting option as a completely open-source self-hosted monitoring tool.
Yes, it is essentially a free option with powerful features if you have a server to host it. It supports notifications, ping chart, status pages (configure with your domain), and various monitoring options.
If you would rather not invest a lot for some essential monitoring features, Uptime Kuma can be an excellent choice. However, make sure that you have the technical expertise (or someone on your team) capable of setting it up and managing it.
4. Freshping
- Up to 50 checks
- Uptime monitors
- 1-minute intervals
- Notifications
- Performance monitoring
- Status pages
- No premium upgrades are available
Freshping is an entirely free service by Freshworks that lets businesses monitor their websites and APIs. If you are looking for a feature-rich option for free, Freshping is an ideal candidate.
You get up to 50 checks at 1-minute intervals, with the ability to monitor URLs, web sockets, and DNS from 10 global locations.
It supports notifications via email, SMS, and a few third-party integrations. You also get the ability to analyze the downtime and performance issues of your website.
Freshping also allows you to create 5 status pages with a custom domain and branding support.
5. UptimeRobot
- Up to 50 monitors
- 5-minute intervals
- Status Page
- Mobile app
- 3 months log retention
UptimeRobot is an incredibly popular free uptime monitoring service. You get 50 monitors with 5-minute interval checks for free.
With the free plan, you get 3-month long log retention and are limited to one status page. It also offers a mobile app to get notified on the go.
It does not give you app integration options for alerts in the free plan.
6. Uptrends
Uptrends is a decent website monitoring service with a free offering.
With the free account, you can monitor your website, and get email alerts when it detects a problem.
The interval between each check is potentially an hour because the platform does not clarify it for the free account.
If you opt for the premium, you can get more monitors, the free account is limited to just one. Overall, Uptrends may not be an attractive free option, but if you want to monitor just one website, with a performance monitoring feature, this can help.
7. Hetrix Tools
- 15 monitors
- 1-minute intervals
- Status page
- Unlimited history
Hetrix Tools is another service with an uptime monitor and blacklist monitor. And, it is entirely free!
You get 15 monitors with a 1-minute interval when opting for uptime monitoring. Sounds pretty neat for a free plan, right?
It also supports the essentials, including status page, SSL monitor, domain expiration monitor, and more. While it has fewer monitoring locations, you can have unlimited status pages and report history.
Furthermore, you get third-party integrations for notifications. Sounds too good to be true?
Well, it may not be as popular compared to its competitors. But, if you are looking for more features without spending a lot, this can be a great pick.
8. Cronitor.io
- 5 monitors
- API and Cron job monitoring
- Status page
Cronitor is a downtime monitoring service with a focus on performance insights and cron jobs.
You can also monitor websites, APIs, and various other things. It is also simple to set up with just your API key, and you’re all set!
It lets you create public status pages, and internal status pages to fully integrate it with the monitoring platform.
It is an incredibly powerful monitoring platform for businesses. So, you get pretty limited features for free, including 5 monitors, email/slack alerts, and a basic status page.
9. Updown
- 100k requests
- 15 sec interval checks
- Status page
- Third-party integrations for notifications
Updown is a premium monitoring service offering one of the fastest 15 second interval checks.
While you can make the most out of it with a paid subscription, you get 100k requests for free for creating an account. And these credits will not expire unless you use them.
So, if you want to test drive the service or use the free credits to monitor your website, SSL, and status pages, you can try it.
Downtime Monitoring Services Help Online Businesses
Downtime monitoring is just one part. You may want to have proper Linux server monitoring tools in place to keep a tab on what's going on with your systems.
If you depend on your online applications or website, an uptime/downtime monitoring service should help you make informed decisions.
You can improve the user experience for your visitors and save time by quickly getting notified of a problem on your website.