10 Best Website Uptime Monitoring Tools in 2024

The attention span of a modern customer is getting smaller every day, and with the number of distractions that our interconnected world offers, it is getting rather ruthless out there. Statistically, one in nine customers who visit your web during any outage or downtime will never come back. That's almost a 10% loss if downtimes occur frequently enough. Luckily, there is a ton of software and tools to monitor your webpage uptime and performance.

What is Uptime?

Before we dig into the list, we need to understand some key terms. Uptime represents the time during which your website and its contents are fully operational and available. It is measured in percent of the time, meaning that if your web is available 99% of the time, you are looking at more than 7 hours of downtime each month.

Downtime, as the word suggests, is the time when a part of or your entire service fails to operate. This causes disruptions and loss of potential clients. Each downtime should be properly registered, evaluated, and informed upon, and that's where uptime monitors come in.

However, monitoring goes far beyond this bipolar of on/off system. Your website can be online and still perform poorly. It might be because of a location-related issue, slow-loading times and bad optimization, or failures during peak hours. All this data is crucial for success and could potentially decide whether you will break through or not. Deciding to work with external website monitors allows you to prevent failure, where others have already failed, and instead, prevent getting there in the first place.

Best Website Uptime monitoring tools in 2023:

Now, let's take a look at the synthetic monitoring toolbox and specifically at the best website uptime monitoring solutions in 2023.

1. Better Stack

Better Stack offers a new, radical approach to uptime monitoring. Thanks to a combination of best practices in website uptime monitoring, incident management and downtime communication via status pages,

Better Stack offers HTTP(s) keyword checks, multi-step verification, heartbeat, SSL, Ping, and Port monitoring, and many more features. Better Stack checks on your website every 30 seconds and from multiple locations, so no more false alarms or location-related issues will go unnoticed. It supports plenty of integrations, including Datadog, New Relic, Grafana, Prometheus, Splunk On-Call, Zabbix, AWS Cloudwatch, GCP, and Azure.

Each error is documented with a screenshot and a second-by-second timeline. In case of any accidents, your system will not be overwhelmed thanks to smart incident merging. On-Call calendar & scheduling will ensure an immediate response. Alerts are handled by Slack, MS Teams, Phone calls, SMS, Push notifications, Zapier, and Webhooks.

When analysing incidents, you can use its reporting and analytics capabilities to overview historical uptime, verify SLA, and better understand incidents in context using incident cause synthesis.

You can get Better Stack for free with Slack, MS Teams and E-Mail alerts, Incident timelines, and 90 seconds check window. Your options grow bigger with the subsequent Freelance bundle for $24 with more alerting possibilities, more elaborate Incident management, 30 seconds monitoring period, or Heroku integration. However, if you need more, make sure to check Small Team, Business, or Enterprise bundles.

Main Benefits of Better Stack:

• A platform combining Uptime Monitoring, Incident Management, and Status Pages
• Possible Integration with Better Stack Logs for even broader monitoring capabilities
• Competitive pricing and a generous free subscription

2. Site24x7

Site24x7’s monitoring allows you to monitor site availability in intervals as low as 60 seconds from over 110 locations around the globe. You can also monitor your APIs and web applications. By analyzing historical data, you can easily identify performance trends occurring over time.

Using regular expression patterns or strings, you can check for the presence of a value in the returned response body, and you can also verify web server configuration by adding response headers.

You can record critical business transactions with their browser extension and check them from multiple locations by simulating traffic. You can either record typical user paths or import Selenium IDE test scripts and use them at regular intervals on a real browser like Chrome or Firefox.

Site24x7 starts at $9 a month with 10 Websites/Servers monitored, 1 Synthetic Web Transaction monitor, 1-minute poll frequency, and more than 110 available test locations. Their  Pro bundle starts at $35 a month and offers up to 40 Websites/Servers monitored and 3 Synthetic Web Transactions monitored. If you are looking for a more complex solution, you can reach for their All-in-one  solution for $35 a month.

Main Benefits of Site24x7:

• Synthetic and RUM monitoring
• Public and Private Cloud Monitoring
• Cloud Cost Management

3. UptimeRobot

UptimeRobot offers an uptime monitoring solution combining website, SSL, Ping and Port, Cron job, and Keyword Monitoring in one place.

Advanced features include Incident Updates sent by email to Status page subscribers, Semi-Customizable Status Pages, Response times monitor, Maintenance Windows, and Custom HTTP requests.

UptimeRobot allows you to monitor your endpoints from multiple locations as often as every 60 seconds in premium plans and 5 minutes in the free subscription.

UptimeRobot is available for free. However, without SMS or Voice call alerts and only 1 status page monitor, and 3 months log retention. Their PRO plan offers a complex service starting at $8 for 50 monitors; you get 20 SMS or call alerts, SSL certification errors, and background job monitoring. Enterprise plan is requested via a custom quote.

Main Benefits of UptimeRobot:

• Keyword monitoring
• Maintenance windows
• Advanced notification settings

4. Uptimia

Uptimia allows you to monitor the uptime of HTTP(s), DNS, UDP, TCP, email, and more as often as every 30 seconds from more than 171 checkpoints. You can also monitor multiple-step transactions such as login and checkout forms. Uptimia also monitors your website’s speed and alerts you if the loading time passes a certain threshold. It also offers a Real User Monitoring option gathering data from visitors, monitoring traffic, website performance, and JavaScript-related errors.

You can assign team members to specific tasks or alerts. Alerting is handled by multiple third-party integrations. You can also prepare scheduled reports that arrive in the inboxes of stakeholders or users on a specified frequency.

Uptimia offers a 30-day free trial. After it, you can continue on a free plan or subscribe to one of their premium packages, starting at $9/month. Starter and Standard subscription packages offer a 1-minute monitoring frequency. To get down to 30 seconds, you have to go for their Advanced or Enterprise bundles.

Main Benefits of Uptimia:

• Real User Monitoring
• Branded Reports
• 30 seconds monitoring frequency in higher tiers

5. StatusCake

StatusCake offers an uptime monitoring platform and public status pages. You can automatically test your website’s uptime from 30 countries worldwide every 5 minutes in their free subscription. StatusCake monitors HTTP, HEAD, TCP, DNS, SMTP, SSH, PING, and PUSH. On top of that, you can keep an eye on your Page Speed, Domain, Servers, and SSL certificates.

StatusCake offers historical uptime monitoring reports up to a month old, allowing you to compare your website’s uptime results and performance. In case of any issue, you can use one of their 14 integrations, including Datadog, Discord, OpsGenie, Pushover, Slack, and more, to get notified immediately.

StatusCake offers a free subscription package, with 10 monitors and 5 minutes monitoring frequency. Page speed is measured once in 24 hours and your domain once a week. You can always upgrade to higher tiers that offer 1 minute or 30 seconds monitoring frequency from custom locations. Statuscake offers three subscription models - Free, Superior, and Business. StatusCake also integrates with several status page tools.

Main Benefits of StatusCake

• 30 seconds monitoring frequency in the most expensive package
• Page speed monitoring
• Historical Uptime Data

6. Sematext

Sematext offers a full spectrum of monitoring solutions, and synthetics belongs among them. Using Sematext Synthetics, you can monitor your Uptime and API from multiple locations, from private networks, and behind firewalls. You can track network timings across all layers, including DNS, TCP, SSL, and HTTP. Using customized requests, you can monitor your APIs, and in case of any error, get notified on your favorite platform, including Slack, Email, Webhooks, and more.

Synthetics also lets you keep an eye on your website’s performance. You can get metrics concerning page load performance, core web vitals, third-party software performance and check its reliability by verifying SLAs. All of the tests take place in real Google Chrome Browser.

Sematext Synthetics operates in two modes. Firstly, the Pay-As-You-Go model with $2 per HTTP monitor and $7 per Browser monitor with a minimum of $5 subscription. Or you can decide to go for a classic bundle, starting at $29 a month with Starter. Starter includes 40 HTTP and 5 Browser monitors maximum and 30 days data retention. However, you can always rank up with the Pro subscription for $99 a month.

Main Benefits of Sematext Synthetics:

• Customizable alerts
• Detailed incident reports
• Status Pages

7. Uptrends

Uptrends is a part of the ITRS group and offers multiple solutions, including Synthetics and RUM. Their synthetics monitoring allows you to monitor your HTTP(s), web services such as SOAP and REST API, security certificates, DNS, and servers from 229 locations around the globe. Their website performance monitoring features allow you to monitor your website and identify a culprit in case of any speed-related issues. Web Application Monitoring ensures that multi-step transactions work as they are supposed to.

All of the data is visualized in interactive charts, where you can zoom in on specific details or filter by date and time to get a closer look at your data and potentially discover patterns in your performance from a time-related perspective.

Uptrends offers a plethora of free tools, including uptime check, website speed test, traceroute, DNS report, or CDN performance check.

You can try Uptrends for free for 30 days. After that, you have to pick from multiple premium bundles, starting with the Starter pack for $15.47 a month.

Main benefits of Uptrends:

• Both Synthetic and RUM solutions are available
• More than 200+ checking locations around the globe

8. Dotcom-monitor

Dotcom-monitor offers multiple solutions for website monitoring. Their Web Services package cover Uptime, Performance, and Functionality monitor of web APIs and Web Servers. Dotcom-monitor calls specified web functions and checks for response content, performance, and uptime of SOAP, REST, JSON, and XML web services. Dotcom-monitor allows you to monitor your website as often as every 1 minute.

It also monitors WebSocket communication protocol and security certificates. If any of the results pass a pre-set threshold, you get an instant alert.

Web Services package offers 1 to 5 minutes check frequency, SSL certification, Response validation, Client Certificate Support, and a 3-year Data Retention. Dotcom includes multiple bundles focused on Server health, Web application performance, and more, each with custom features and pricing.

Main Benefits of Dotcom-monitor:

• Multi-User Support
• Configuration API
• Real-Time XML Data Feed

9. Updown

Updown is a project of a french coder, offering a simple yet efficient monitoring solution. You can monitor your website from 8 monitoring nodes, which are located in North America, Europe, East Asia, and Australia. You can monitor your website as often as every 15 seconds. You can also monitor your SSL certificates, integrate Updown with REST and WebHook APIs and monitor the presence of a string instead of the regular HTTP status.

Every error is double-checked. In case of any issue, Updown can alert you on multiple channels, including SMS, Webhook, Zapier, Telegram, Statuspage, and Slack. You can also get a hosted Status Page providing single or multi-site availability and performance reports.

Updown is trying to keep it simple while providing you with professional service. It operates in a pay-as-you-go model, and the pricing can be calculated directly on its landing page. Meaning that you get a comprehensive test of 5 websites every 1 minute for approximately $3/month. Reducing the checking period to 15 seconds would cost you an additional $8.

Main Benefits of Updown.io:

• dual-stack monitoring (IPv4/6) for the same price
• Possibility of paying in cryptocurrencies
• Text search matching the presence of as string, instead of the HTTP status

10. Pingdom

An established tool from SolarWinds, Pingdom offers both uptime monitoring and RUM. Its RUM offers all the basic statistics about active sessions, bounce rates, visits from different regions, load times, and more.

Altering is handled through SMS and email, along with public status pages and reports with unlimited users.

Pingdom’s pricing model does not include a free option and is based on monthly page views. More specifically, Pingdom separates Synthetic Monitoring and RUM into two groups, both starting at $10 a month. Its Synthetic monitoring model includes proactive monitoring of website application availability, performance, and business transactions. On the other hand, the RUM contains troubleshooting of website application performance from your user’s perspective.

Main Benefits of Pingdom:

• No-Code Transaction Recorder
• Real User Monitoring (RUM)
• Synthetic Transaction Checks

Conclusion

We’ve established that having a website uptime monitoring solution substantially increases your odds of success and of delivering consistent and reliable service. In this article, we went through the basics of what website uptime is and then the best monitoring solutions in 2023.

Want to explore more tools?

Looking for a tool to cater to a very specific use-case? Here are a few lists with monitoring tools to check out:

• 22 Tools for Synthetic Monitoring (Tried & Tested)
• 10 Best Ping Monitoring Solutions in 2023
• 10 Best SSL Certificate Monitoring Tools in 2023
• 10 Best Cron Job Monitoring Tools in 2023
• 10 Best DNS Monitoring Tools in 2023

Article by

Jenda Tovarys

Jenda leads Growth at Better Stack. For the past 5 years, Jenda has been writing about exciting learnings from working with hundreds of developers across the world. When he's not spreading the word about the amazing software built at Better Stack, he enjoys traveling, hiking, reading, and playing tennis.

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