Best utilities to monitor web sites for server availability and changes
If search for a way to be informed when one or more sites become unavailable, their server is down, etc., without subscribing to on line monitors that provide this service, no need to worry. In this post I feature two utilities, a free application for Windows and a Chrome extension.
I have tried a number of web site monitoring applications and also a number of Chrome extensions that offer similar functions. SiteUp one of the most convenient free programs for Windows that will let you monitor the availability of any number of web sites.
A nice feature of this utility is that it can even search for a particular word or phrase in monitored web sites, in which case you can be sure not only that the server is up, but also that your site works fine and is not unavailable. Now, if that word is not found, the monitored site is down or hacked (its content changed).
The program monitors “simple” and secured (https) sites at an interval you can define. When a server is down or the keyword is not found on the monitored page, its system tray icon changes and you are also notified by a popup message. Nice.
If you prefer to use a Chrome extension to monitor web sites, then Website Status was a great one for its simplicity and autonomy. However, the developers didn’t follow Google’s rules and they were banned!
