Uptime Robot – Keep Your Website Online

It’s not uncommon for most websites to go down from time to time, whether because of code errors, server problems, or network outages. Although there are no sure-fire ways to guarantee a website won’t go down, there are tools that people can use to remedy the situation and get their sites back online as quickly as possible. Uptime Robot is one of these tools, providing users with immediate notifications when their websites go offline.

Uptime Robot monitors HTTP, ping, port, and checks keywords every five minutes, day and night. As soon as you’ve signed up for a free account and entered your website data, Uptime Robot will get to work. The system asks for your website headers and gets status codes — like “200-ok” and “404-not found” — every five minutes. If a status code indicates that your website is not loading, Uptime Robot will send you an automated alert via email, SMS, mobile push, or Twitter. The system will also verify its own findings, immediately making several more checks of your website to ensure it’s really down before sending you an alert.

Uptime Robot encourages its users to visit their account dashboards even when their websites appear to be running smoothly, to see real-time uptime and response time statistics. Although all primary checks are made from the system’s main engines in Dallas, Texas, secondary requests to verify downtime are sent from remote nodes located around the world.

Practical Uses:

• Find out immediately when your website has gone offline
• View real-time uptime statistics
• Verify whether your website has gone offline for everyone, or only visitors in a particular location
• Get email alerts when your website is running slowly

Insider Tips:

• Users should update their analytics service when they start using Uptime Robot
• False positives are usually caused by a hosting provider blocking Uptime Robot’s IPs
• Uptime Robot’s main monitoring location is in Dallas, Texas
• Uptime Robot offers an easy-to-use API

What we liked:

• Distributed monitoring systems help minimize false positives
• Keyword checks monitor whether a keyword exists in a web page
• Uptime Robot uses 50 different monitors
• Uptime Robot offers premium-level support

What we didn’t like:

• Uptime Robot doesn’t offer as many premium-level features as competing applications

Alternatives:

• Chartbeat – https://chartbeat.com
• Clicky – http://clicky.com
• Wupbox – http://wupbox.com

Company Info:

• Launched: January 2010
• Privately Held
• Headquarters: Istanbul, Turkey
• Founded by: Umut Muhaddisoglu and Daniel Rimille
• Web site: http://uptimerobot.com

Costs:

• Free