In today’s digital age, there are hundreds of website monitoring tools flooding the market. Each one promises different abilities, features, and benefits. Each one may state that it monitors different items. From real-time alerts, custom monitoring checks, spam detection, threat detection, and integration options, the various tools tend to leave searchers wondering – ”Which one do I choose for my website?”
Well, that’s why we chose today’s blog post topic, helping readers figure out how to evaluate which website monitoring tool will suit their needs best. Let’s take a deep dive into what to look for and why each feature should receive careful consideration. We’ve also taken the liberty of adding a “✔️” to each feature that Tethered provides.
1. Real-time alerts ✔️
What to look for:
The first thing you want to find in the perfect website monitoring tool is real-time alerts. Make sure to check if the tool promises to notify you each time your website goes down. It’s an added benefit if you can select how you’re notified, including the platform and timeframe.
Why is it important:
When your website goes down, you want to be (and should be) the first to know about it. The last thing you want is for a user to visit your website and find that your website is unresponsive or functioning poorly.
By getting real-time alerts you can be the first one to know when your website is experiencing problems. This information helps website owners take immediate action to quickly identify and address your website or server problems. This means that the impact it has on users and business operations is minimized.
2. Integration options ✔️ (unlimited)
What to look for:
Next, you want to look for a tool that allows you to integrate with many different apps. This means it should be able to connect with plenty of popular communication tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, PagerDuty, and more.
Ideally, you’ll be able to integrate the website monitoring with your current CMS and marketing tools with minimal effort. This allows for faster incident responses and notifications. It should also seamlessly connect with monitoring and alerting systems to provide consolidated reports.
Why is it important:
Users might underestimate the value of an integrative tool. It will save time, money, and effort if the developers have streamlined this process. For a website or business to be successful, each part needs to work together like a well-oiled machine (cliche, we know – but true).
By having many integration options you can get alerted on the apps that you use the most, rather than having to download one that you will never need or have never heard of. You need to know that something on your website has gone wrong but on the app of your choice.
Integration with other tools and apps allows you to automate your processes and workflows, increase efficiency, and reduce the need for you to step in.
3. Custom monitoring checks ✔️
What to look for:
You want to look for a tool that will allow you to tailor your monitoring strategy to meet your specific needs and requirements. When you consider the need for this feature, think about the ability to create and configure checks for different types of services and components. By looking for flexibility in monitoring checks, thresholds, and response actions, you ensure that you can closely monitor critical aspects of your system.
Why is it important:
Custom monitoring checks are important for many reasons. They play an important role in the website monitoring of your website by allowing you to closely monitor specific criteria.
Smaller companies are often made up of team members with dynamic roles and are capable of adapting quickly. Having an uptime monitor in place will alleviate part of the workload and act as a guarantee for functionality.
4. Multiple monitoring options ✔️
What to look for:
When looking for a good website monitoring tool, you should take a look at the type of monitoring it offers. Specifically, look for a tool that provides different methods of monitoring such as port monitoring, keyword monitoring, threat detection, and of course, uptime monitoring.
Each of these monitoring types serves a different purpose and helps make sure that your website is fully covered. For example:
- HTTP and HTTPS monitoring checks the availability and response time of webpages.
- Keyword monitoring allows you to monitor the presence or absence of keywords on pages or within URLs.
- Threat monitoring tells you if other sites or users have reported your site as a scam or threat, allowing you to address the situation before it escalates.
- Uptime monitoring is used to indicate a website’s health and functionality. The goal is 100% uptime 100% of the time, but if it experiences downtime, a quick notification will put you in the best position for damage control.
Why is it important:
Simply put – it’s your website’s guarantee for reliability and availability. Each monitoring type gives you unique information and insight into the performance and functionality of your website or app. That is why you need to find a website monitoring tool that offers more than the basics, but rather, a combination. The more aspects site owners monitor, the simpler it will be to pinpoint the problem and get that status back to 100% operational again.
5. Page speed monitoring
What to look for:
Page speed monitoring measures the loading time of pages on your website or app. A tool that offers real-time monitoring of page load times from different locations around the world is an invaluable tool for targeting strategies.
Why is it important:
Page speed monitoring is one of the more important website monitoring features. Page speed directly impacts user satisfaction and retention. Slow-loading web pages lead to feelings of frustration and are often the result of high bounce rates. This affects your site’s overall uptime and credibility.
By monitoring page speed, you can easily find performance problems, server issues, or code errors that are causing delays in loading times. This means you will be able to quickly optimize your site’s performance, improve UX, and maintain high uptime levels.
6. Detailed reports ✔️
What to look for:
It’s important to look closely at the details of reports offered by website monitoring tools.
Do they provide the accurate time of the error?
Do they list the key features contributing to slower loading times?
Look for a tool that gives you a detailed and customizable report on different aspects of your website or app’s performance and uptime. These reports should include information on uptime/downtime events, response times, error rates, and performance metrics.
Why is it important:
Detailed reports can help you easily solve the problem of your downtime. By having a detailed report you can quickly see what to fix such as downtime events, performance bottlenecks, or recurring issues, and when the error occurred. This information plays an important role in preventing repeat events.
These detailed reports also help you to keep track of performance trends, and measure the effectiveness of any optimizations or changes made to your site.
7. Mobile app ✔️
What to look for:
When considering a monitoring tool, it is important to check if the tool you choose has a mobile app. The app should be compatible with both iOS and Android devices because it will allow you to monitor your website or app’s uptime on the go without the limitation of specific software requirements. The mobile app should also feature real-time alerts and notifications.
Why is it important:
When you are an on-the-go type of person (as most website or business owners are) a mobile app is always beneficial. Mobile apps give you flexibility, accessibility, and real-time information about your website or application. This allows you to take action as quickly as possible and conveniently relay instructions to your team.
Mobile apps also allow you to monitor your site’s uptime and performance from anywhere, at any time, without being tied to a desktop computer.
8. Status Pages ✔️
What to look for:
When thinking about features for an uptime monitoring tool, you should consider if they offer status pages. Status pages provide a public-facing dashboard showing you real-time uptime and performance information.
A tool that gives you customizable status pages that you can brand with your logo or colors to maintain consistent branding would be an added bonus. The status page should provide detailed information on the current uptime status, recent incidents, maintenance schedules, and performance.
Why is it important:
Status pages play an important role in website monitoring by giving you transparency, accountability, and communication. By having a status page, you can keep users, customers, and team members informed about the current status of the site. Status pages also help streamline communication during downtime events by giving you all the information you need in one place.
Status pages that are visible to the public also build trust and credibility with your audience and show your commitment to providing reliable service.
9. Load testing
What to look for:
Last but not least, we have load testing.
Load testing simulates real-world user traffic to your website or app to test its performance under different levels of ‘stress’. With this feature, you would be able to simulate high traffic volumes, test server response times, and find potential performance issues. It should give you customizable load-testing scenarios. This means that you would be able to replicate various user behaviors and test how your site handles peak load conditions under the scenario.
Why is it important:
This feature will allow you to identify and address performance issues before they happen in the real world. By simulating high-traffic scenarios and stress-testing your system, load testing allows you to see what type of server limitations or infrastructure weaknesses you may have. These can lead to downtime under heavy user loads.
Ultimately, load testing allows you to fine-tune your system, enhance user experience, and maintain high levels of uptime.
Key takeaway…
Website monitoring should give you the freedom and convenience of getting your server and downtime problems solved as quickly and efficiently as possible. These key features will help you transform your website’s performance. Features like customizable status pages, real-time alerts, and multiple monitoring types are essential for any monitoring tool.
That is why Tethered is highly rated amongst users. With a free forever plan and more features than most can promise for hefty price tags, Tethered is a preferred option for website monitoring needs. From unlimited monitors, unlimited integrations, Port Monitoring, keyword monitoring, customizable status pages, and more…for free. Visit us today and find out if we are your next new tool.