A website monitoring service is a very useful tool for all kinds of online businesses. Among other things, it can monitor if your website is down and notify you to take corrective actions.
The best part of all, there are a number of reliable and free website monitoring services you can use without paying a monthly subscription fee.
We did our research and in this guide, we’ll compare the best website monitoring services. For each tool, you’ll learn what is offered in their free package and what do you get if you decide to upgrade to a paid plan.
What is a Website Monitoring Service?
A website monitoring service is an online application that makes regular checks to ensure that a website or web application is functioning as expected. During the monitoring process, it can check website uptime, site speed, and other functionality and performance indicators.
When a problem is detected the website owner is notified by SMS or email to take further actions.
To activate website monitoring for your website, you simply need to register with a service provider.
You don’t have to install anything on your website or server. You can also choose which functionality or performance indicators you want to monitor and how to get notified in case there is an issue.
Why Do You Need to Monitor Your Website?
We’ve been using several website monitoring services for more than a decade now and they can prove useful in many cases. The most important are:
Get notified of website downtimes – Most web hosting providers guarantee a 99% uptime. This means that your website can be down for a total of 4 days per year, without violating their SLA.
Fortunately, this is not the case f you have chosen a good website hosting service but it can occasionally happen even with the best. In those cases, unless you have a website monitoring service activated, you won’t know when it happens, especially if it’s after hours.
Monitor key performance metrics – A website monitoring service can measure your website’s speed from various locations and devices and alert you if it passes a specific threshold. This is both useful and important since website speed and core web vitals metrics play their role in SEO and rankings.
Top 7 Free Website Monitoring Tools
These are the best website monitoring tools you can use to monitor your website’s uptime for free.
1. SiteUptime
SiteUptime is the best free website monitoring service. We’ve been using their website uptime service for years and it is highly recommended.
Creating a free account with SiteUptime is easy and straightforward. They only need your name and email address. No credit card or other information is required.
What’s included in their free plan?
With their free plan, you get 1 monitor, which means that you can monitor one website. The checks are made every 30 minutes and you get notified by email in case of downtime. At the end of the month, you also get a summary report.
For most users, this is enough to ensure that their website is up and running 100% of the time.
What do you get with a paid plan?
If you choose to upgrade to a paid plan, SiteUptime offers two paid packages.
The Standard Plan costs $10/mo and comes with 3 website monitors, 2-minute checks, and the ability to get notified by SMS.
The Premium Plan costs $20/mo and it includes the same features as the Standard Plan but for 6 websites + web page content monitoring.
2. UpTimeRobot
UpTimeRobot presents itself as the world’s leading uptime monitoring service, and they rightfully make this claim. Both the free and paid plans include great features and their pricing is reasonable.
What’s included in their free plan?
With their free plan, you get 50 monitors and 5 minutes checks. In addition, you get features that other platforms have in their paid plans like:
- Response time monitoring
- Webpage content monitoring
- A mobile app to check alerts
- Email service monitoring
- Network monitor
Registering for the free service does not require a credit card, only email verification.
What do you get with a paid plan?
With a paid plan, starting at $7/month, you get all features from the free plan with the following additional services:
- 1-minute checks
- SSL monitoring
- Cron monitoring
- SMS or voice call alerts
- 24 months log retention
UpTimeRobot offers a 10-day money-back guarantee.
Overall this is one of the best free website monitoring services if you want to monitor more than one website, all from the same account.
3. UpTrends
Another website monitoring tool worth considering is UpTrends. They offer a range of monitoring services including uptime monitoring, web application monitoring, web performance monitoring, and API monitoring.
What’s included in their free plan?
With the free starter plan you get:
- 10 website monitors
- Website uptime and HTTPS checks (interval is customizable)
- SMS, Email, and Mobile App alerts
- Server and network monitoring
But, here is the catch with Uptrend’s free plan. You get all the above services for free for 30 days only. After the trial period, you need to register for one of their free plans.
On the positive side, all free plans are fully functional and they don’t auto-renew so you don’t have to worry about canceling your subscription when the trial period ends.
What do you get with a paid plan?
With their starter paid plan you get the same features described above for $15.47/month if paid annually. With the Business plan ($21.59/month), you get additional services like:
- Unlimited operators
- Concurrent checks
- Monitor in 4 different browsers including Chrome and Firefox
- Screenshots showing the actual error or problem identified during monitoring
4. Host Tracker
Host tracker is a full-service website monitoring tool. Besides the standard monitoring services offered by other platforms, you can use Host Tracker to pause your Google Ads when a website is not available.
This is a nice feature for businesses that spend a lot of money on Google Ads and don’t want to pay for clicks that lead to unreachable pages.
What’s included in their free plan?
Similar to UpTrends, they don’t offer an unlimited free plan but a free 30-day trial plan. With the trial plan, you get all the features in the Webmaster plan + detailed check log and snapshotting for better diagnostics.
What do you get with a paid plan?
If you want to use one of their advanced features (Google Ads management, API, page speed monitoring), you need to register for the Business plan which costs $18.25 / month.
Choose this service if you plan to use their Google Ads pause feature. If you only need basic functionality you can go with UpTimeRobot or SiteUptime.
5. Status Cake
Status Cake monitoring suite includes 5 services related to website uptime monitoring, page speed monitoring, domain expiration monitoring, server resources monitoring, and SSL monitoring.
What’s included in their free plan?
With the free package, you get 10 uptime monitors, 5 minutes checks, 1 domain monitor, and 1 SSL monitor.
In addition, you get one page speed test every 24 hours. You also have the option to configure how you want to get notified for alerts. Available options include Twitter, Slack, Push Bullet, and many more.
This is one of the best free plans available to monitor a single domain without paying anything. Status Cake commits to a forever-free plan which increases its reliability and trust.
What do you get with a paid plan?
They offer two paid plans, the Superior plan costing $19.99 per month and the Business plan at $69 per month.
The most noticeable differences between the free and paid plans (besides the number of monitors) are:
- Custom locations: With a paid plan you can select the location where you want your tests to be run.
- White-label reports: You can generate reports with your logo.
- Free SMS credits: To get alerts via SMS.
6. Site 24×7
Site 24×7 is an all-in-one monitoring solution. They offer a comprehensive set of monitoring services that include:
- Monitor Website Performance
- Server Monitoring
- Synthetic Web Transaction Monitoring
- Network Monitoring
- Application Performance Monitoring
- Public and Private Cloud Monitoring
- Real User Monitoring | RUM
- Cloud Cost Management
- Log Management from the Cloud
Site24x7 is more suited for DevOps and IT operations that want to monitor the availability and performance of their applications and not just website monitoring.
What’s included in their free plan?
With their free forever plan, you can monitor up to 5 websites/servers. You also get 1 hosted status page and cloud cost analysis for Amazon Web Services (AWS).
To register for the free plan, you need to click the link which is “hidden” below their paid pricing plans.
What do you get with a paid plan?
All their paid plans include a 30-day free trial, so you can test them risk-free.
With their Starter plan ($9/mo – paid annually), you get all the standard features you would expect from a good website monitoring provider. The most notable are:
- 10 Websites/Servers
- 1 Advanced Monitor
- 100K RUM Pageviews & 1 Site
- Select from over 110+ Locations
- 50 SMS/Voice Credits per month
Overall, Site24x7 is a good choice for simple monitoring tasks but also for more advanced tasks, mostly related to cloud management.
For the average user who wants to monitor its website uptime, their free plan is sufficient but it lacks alerts. This means you have to visit your status page to check for possible issues.
7. Montastic
Another monitoring service worth checking out is Montastic. It’s a trusted company used by companies like Google, Vmware, Twitter, IBM, and many more.
What differentiates Montastic from the rest is the ability to execute custom scripts based on the results of a specific URL check. This feature may not be so important for the average user but for developers and IT administrators it can prove very useful.
What’s included in their free plan?
With the free forever plan, they offer 9 monitored URLs, 30-minute checks, custom reports, and notifications by email.
These features are more than enough for checking your website’s uptime time and availability.
What do you get with a paid plan?
If you decide to register for a paid plan, you have two options. The Business plan costs $10/month and the Enterprise plan at $49/month.
With the Business plan, you can monitor up to 50 websites/URLs every 5 minutes. You also get SMS notifications.
Which is the Best Free Website Monitoring Software?
The best free website monitoring service for a single domain is SiteUpTime. If you want to monitor multiple domains, the best free option is UpTimeRobot.
The table below compares the features you can get with a free website monitoring plan.
| Vendor | Cost | Main Features |
| SiteUpTime | Forever Free | 1 monitor, 30-minute checks, uptime reports, email alerts, 11 monitoring locations. |
| UpTimeRobot | Forever Free | 50 monitors, 5-minute checks, response time monitoring, keyword monitoring, mobile app. |
| UpTrends | 30 Day Free trial | 10 website monitors, website uptime and HTTPS checks, SMS, email, and mobile app alerts, server, and network monitoring. |
| Host-Tracker | 30 Day Free Trial | 10 monitors, 5-minute checks, detailed check log and snapshotting, email alerts |
| Status Cake | Forever Free | 10 uptime monitors, 5 minutes checks, 1 domain monitor, 1 SSL monitor, 1 page speed test per day. |
| Site24x7 | Forever Free | 5 websites/servers, 1 hosted status page, and cloud cost analysis for amazon web services (AWS). |
| Montastic | Forever Free | 9 monitored URLs, 30-minute checks, custom reports, and notifications by email. |
Conclusion
Having a website monitoring service is a must for all kinds of online businesses. Getting notified of downtimes and other website issues is important if you want to offer top service to your users.
For most users, the features offered by free plans are more than sufficient. If you have special requirements, you can consider registering for one of the paid plans outlined above.
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