There are many freely available tools which let you monitor up time of your website for free. My personal favorite is UptimeRobot. Whether you have a personal blog or a business website/ company profile website, you can utilize the free service offered by the company to monitor your website and its downtime.
Adding a monitor is quite simple. Just register on the website, enter your website url, and select monitor type from HTTP, Ping, Port or Keyword. I generally prefer Keyword monitor type and select one of the keyword ( text) available on the homepage of the website as my monitoring parameter. I set up an alert by email – if keyword not exists and that’s it. In case my website ever goes down, I receive an email right in my inbox – whereby I can take appropriate action i.e. Reboot my server/ Contact Hosting company etc.
While on the subject of downtime and hosting, I would like to point out few things. For shared hosting, I always recommend Hostgator to my clients. I have been with Hostgator for 6+years now and never once have come across with any problems. For users who contact their hosting company when their website is down – make sure to check your website on isup.me before creating ticket on the support portal of hosting company.
Creating an up time / down time monitor for your website is a very small step and takes less than 5 minutes to set up. I urge all new website owners to add this step in their to do list while making a new website.