When your website suddenly stops loading, would you even know? And when you find your site not loading, how do you know what it is? Is it your hosting provider? A plugin? Your internet connection? Or is the entire site actually down? Or the whole internet, for that matter.
In steps the idea of “Uptime Monitoring”, which we do for free for MIGHTYminnow clients on our maintenance plan, and you can do for free to keep your site safe if you are not. (In which case make sure you also have a good backup plan in place). You can also do website monitoring for FREE, which is a word everyone loves.
What Is Website Uptime Monitoring?
Uptime monitoring is a service that checks your website automatically, around the clock, to make sure it’s online. If your site stops responding, even for a few minutes, someone gets an alert. If you’re on our maintenance plan, we get the alert, but you can set them up too.
Downtime affects:
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Visitors and customers who can’t access your content
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Sales and leads if forms or checkout pages stop working
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Search engines, which can temporarily lower your rankings if they detect downtime
Even high-quality hosting can have occasional blips, so monitoring provides peace of mind.
How to Monitor Your Website for Free
There are several reliable, free tools that will monitor your website and notify you if it goes down:
1. UptimeRobot (Free Tier)
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Checks your site every 5 minutes
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Sends alerts by email, SMS, or push notifications
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Easy to set up
2. Better Stack (Free Tier)
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Faster checks (as quick as 30 seconds on paid plans, still solid on free plans)
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Clean interface and great incident history
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Integrations with Slack, Teams, etc.
3. Freshping
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50 checks included on the free plan
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Simple dashboard and email alerts
These tools take only a few minutes to configure—just enter your website URL, choose how you want to receive alerts, and you’re done.
If You’re a MIGHTYminnow maintenance client,
If you’re on our maintenance plan, you don’t need to set up uptime monitoring yourself, as we already do this for you.
We watch your site 24/7 for downtime and critical issues, and we handle alerts so you don’t have to live with another notification in your inbox. If something goes wrong, we’re already on it. We’ll notify you if there is something you need to know or do, like if your website hosting needs a payment or your domain name has expired. Though we monitor your domain expiration as well and will generally have notified you way before your site goes down.
If Your Site Appears to Be Down: What To Do First
Before panicking, there are two quick steps to follow:
Check Your Host’s Status Page
Nearly every hosting provider maintains a real-time status page that shows whether servers or services are experiencing issues.
Examples:
- WP Engine Status—official system status updates.
- Pressable Status—Pressable service updates and notifications.
- GoDaddy Status—GoDaddy real-time performance and outage info.
- SiteGround Status—check your SiteGround hosting/server status.
- Bluehost Status—real-time Bluehost hosting and service status.
If your host shows an outage, you don’t need to troubleshoot; you know why it is down, and you just wait for the all-clear.
Based on Your Maintenance Plan, Reach Out to the Right Place
If you’re a maintenance client:
Reach out to us. We’ll investigate the issue, confirm whether it’s host-related or something else, and handle communication with the host if needed.
If you’re not on a maintenance plan:
Contact your hosting provider directly. They’ll be able to check your server, security firewall, and account-level settings.
Peace of Mind, One Alert at a Time
Website downtime is stressful, but with good monitoring in place, you can drastically reduce surprises. And if you’re already working with us through our maintenance plan, rest easy: we’re watching your site so you don’t have to.
If you’d like help setting up uptime monitoring or want to learn more about our maintenance services, just reach out. We’re happy to help keep your site running smoothly.
