Top 7 Best Website Monitoring Tools & Software [Top Picks]

There are many website monitoring tools online these days, some are completely free, whilst offer paid subscription plans to gain more benefits whilst others simply are paid only.

When you're trying to figure out what the best website monitoring tool is, it's best to compare various monitoring tools and choose the right one

But how do you do this?

How do you choose the best website or domain monitoring tool that suits both you and your website?

Luckily, we've written an article on this subject so that you don't have to second guess, you can read more about that before continuing to read this article.

That aside, let's dive right in and look at what a website monitor or domain monitor actually is!

What is a website monitoring tool and why do I need one?

Put simply, a website monitoring tool is an online service that you can sign up to (usually for FREE) and have it keep track of expiring domains and let you know when your website is up or down.

If your website is down, or in other words - not accessible, then it's important for you to know straight away so that you can understand why your website has gone down and take action getting it back online for your customers.

If you don't already have your website domain name being monitored by one of these online tools then now is a great opportunity to get started with one.

Why do I need a website monitor?

If your website is down, as discussed above, you could be losing sales and not generating leads. This is why it's important to have one!

You could hire someone to constantly check whether your site is working or not, or you could do it yourself, but you're unlikely going to want to do that because you'll be focused on other things like:

• Customer service
• Handling complaints
• Working on the next BOLD and BIG idea for your website

Now that you know a little more about why you need one of these tools, let's take a look at some of the best on the market!

The Top 7 Best Website Monitoring Tools That You Can Sign Up To Today!

1. Uptime Robot - A well known and established monitoring tool for your website and IP addresses. They offer a wide range of features and a FREE plan to get up and running
2. StatusCake - a website monitoring solution that keeps you ahead of the competition by helping you drive more revenue with your domain
3. Better Uptime - a unique monitoring tool that will alert you by calling you when something goes wrong
4. NodePing - A cost effective solution to keeping a check on your domains, and upgradable features that you can tack onto your account
5. Uptrends - if a laser focused subscription plan to a domain monitoring tool is what you're after, look no further than Uptrends!
6. Uptime - A similar name to Uptime Robot, but it's not them. They claim to make uptime & performance monitoring easy
7. Montastic - an affordable monitoring tool for your website, which even comes with a free plan.

Uptime Robot

Let's start with a well established website monitoring tool. They're currently one of the world's leading uptime monitoring services and have a great graphical interface that makes it easy for you to add uptime monitors.

Key features:

• A generous number of integrations to keep you informed of your monitor's performance
• FREE plan which allows you to add up-to 50 monitors
• Status pages for sharing with your customers

Uptime Robot is an excellent choice if you're looking for a simple, easy to use uptime monitor that allows you to quickly add a domain, set a monitoring interval and let their systems do the rest.

With over 4.5 million monitors and a free plan offering up-to 50 monitors it's no surprise that they make it into our list of best website monitoring tools on the market.

Their free plan offers 5 minute check intervals, but if you're looking for something a little more, then take a look at their PRO plan which offers faster checks, SMS alerts and heap load of additional features all for a reasonable monthly cost.

What's more, if you don't like their service, they offer a 30 day money back guarantee which allows you to try out their product and if you don't like it, you can cancel.

StatusCake

Despite Uptime Robot making the first place in our best website monitoring list, we can't ignore StatusCake.

They do exactly what it says in the domain. They make sure the status of your website remains up by letting you know as and when it goes down.

Key features:

• A FREE plan offering up-to 10 monitors
• Server monitoring
• SSL monitoring

If you're looking for a website monitor that can check your SSL too, then why not get started with StatusCake?

A funky name and a cool website is the face of StatusCake and their free plan offers everything you could need.

Here at the domain monitor, we really like what StatusCake have done with their website here, the fonts, colour and friendly images make their identity unique (not that the others in this list aren't unique of course)

If you're looking for a website monitor that will check your website's load times as well, then this domain monitoring tool will do exactly that - and quite simply, does exactly what it says on the tin unsurprisingly.

If you're looking for black friday deals as well, StatusCake do offer black friday discounts as well - because who doesn't love a black friday discount when it comes to domain tools.

Better Uptime

I guess it's in the name for this one, if you're looking for better uptime on your website, then they'll do just that!

We really like some of the functionality that they have to offer, just check out some of the key features.

Key features:

• Incident data for when you need it the most
• A phone call for when your website, RAID array or something else fails
• An elegant status page, just for you

Better Uptime is a unique type of monitoring service in that their website tells you that they'll phone you when your website is down, when your RAID array is down or even if your database is down.

Personally, I'm not too sure exactly how a feature beyond a simple domain check or IP check is going to add much value to the individual business owner who's just starting their website.

But for you, this might be the perfect monitoring tool that fits your needs and meets your requirements.

They've got a generous free plan which offers a few checks, 10 monitors and free email alerts.

It must be worth pointing out though that most website monitoring and domain monitoring tools will offer free email alerts for when your site goes down. Including our free domain monitor.

NodePing

Okay, I must admit, the name here is unusual for my liking. But that doesn't make NodePing a bad choice, especially if email monitoring is what you're after.

Key features:

• Checks your website from multiple locations
• Location rechecks
• Control when you receive notifications

If simplicity and quality is what you're after, take a good look at NodePing. They offer a simple pricing plan for their tiered approach to domain monitoring and offer ease of use when it comes to adding domains to monitor.

What you'll really like about NodePing is their ability to notify you of when your domain is down (like the competition) BUT on different days of the week!

How cool is that?

Unlike most website monitoring tools that simply check when your website is up or down and then alert you immediately, NodePing will do this based on the configuration for notifications that you set.

Unfortunately though, they don't currently (at the time of creating this article) offer a free plan, this is something we at the domain monitor would like to see - some kind of free plan.

However, is this really a negative?

By not offering a free plan means that 110% of their efforts are likely focused in building a robust set of customers and helping reduce spam customers that simply signed up to abuse the system right?

So for this reason, I strongly suggest shortlisting NodePing as a great website monitoring tool that you can get started with quickly!

Uptrends

Unlike some of the other website monitoring tools we've covered in this list, Uptrends has nailed the nail here with their clean and friendly UI. They allow you to monitor your APIs and your website, all for a reasonable price that contains some generous discounts!

Key features:

• Ability to monitor the uptime of an API
• Monitor your website uptime
• iOS and Android apps available to download

Uptrends have been around for a little while, and like me you might not have heard of them. I certainly hadn't until recently.

If you're looking for the complete website monitoring solution, then Uptrends is the way to go. It's their tag line, and also the truth behind the success of their service.

Uptrends allows you to add monitors and check at 1 minute intervals. And unlike Uptime Robot, it's slightly cheaper too.

Their support and knowledge base are second to none, making Uptrends a perfect choice if you're just starting out.

Unfortunately, they don't offer a free plan to monitor your website, but do offer (like many monitoring tools) a free trial to their paid plans.

Uptime

Another uptime monitoring service that claims to make uptime & performance monitoring easy. Just how easy? Well, very easy! Unlike some of the other website monitoring tools in our list, Uptime will also check for viruses on your website.

Key features:

• Virus checking with Google Safe Browsing and Yandex Safe Browsing
• Detailed uptime reports that you can receive daily, weekly or monthly via email
• On-Demand alerts to keep you in the know how

Uptime has made it into our best website and domain monitoring tools because of their ability to scan for viruses on your website using third party (trusted) providers.

Nobody wants to find out that their website has got a virus, especially if you're selling products and/or services online right?

Uptime will allow you to create an unlimited number of monitors, a feature that not every uptime monitor solution will offer, and they'll even allow you to create API monitors, Ping monitors and other types of monitors all in one package.

There is a price to all of this though, and it's got a bit of a price tag against it.

Unfortunately, their website isn't as finely refined as some of the other website monitoring tools we've covered here, but this is because they are providing an excellent dashboard/portal for you (the customer) to interact with and use.

Montastic

Montastic is a website monitoring tool with a twist. It's likely aimed at the developers in our world, and by this I mean they allow you to display status badges in your Github or Gitlab project.

Wondering what Github is if you're not a developer? It's a type of version control software that allows developers to collaborate and manage the code that lives on your website.

Key features:

• A FREE plan to get up and running with several monitors
• Status pages for your customers
• Competitive and affordable monthly plans if you want to upgrade

If a website monitoring tool aimed towards developers is something you'd be interested in, then Montastic is a type of uptime monitor that you'll for sure want to check out.

They've got the functionality to...

Simply, monitor your website.

And that's about it sadly. You do have the option of having a single status page to display to users, or if you upgrade to their paid plans then you'll be able to have SMS alerts as well as other features such as response times, a feature that our free domain monitor offers for free.

I honestly think that for you and your business, or even if you're not a developer that their monitoring tool is certainly worth trying and giving a go.

Conclusion: Choosing The Best Website Monitoring Tool For You

When it comes to choosing the best website monitoring tool, you'll want to give them all a try, and try them for a few months at a time. Sometimes it's not often clear whether a domain monitoring tool is any good if you try it for a few days.

Typically you'll want to try one for a few months at the very least.

Here at the domain monitor, we offer a completely free domain monitor that you can sign up to and check the domain expiry date, check SSL information, WHOIS data and also monitor the uptime of your website.

All packaged in an easy to use portal. Sometimes paying for a monitoring tool isn't really worth it, unless you really need those additional features!