While I’v been using all of the existing Free Uptime monitoring services, none of them provide all features I need, something was always missing. So we decided to create one more Service health monitoring service. Let’s have quick glimpse what I’m talking here. When we started creation of this service, following list of requirements was put together:
- Free usage within reasonable limits for IT enhusiasts or SMB-s
- Flexibility to balance checks count, interval and complexity:
- Minimal interval 1 minute
- tens to hundreds of servers (depending of check interval and service complexity)
- HTTP and HTTPS based services
- SSL certificate lifetime monitoring, also for non-HTTP services
- TCP based services, like SMTP, IMAP, POP3, MQTT…
- ICMP based checks
- Instant first-check to validate proper monitored service configuration
- Statuspage to share publicly with customers
- e-mail notifications, possibly different address as admin email.
- checks performed from monitoring node in Europe
Have more details from Features page.
Now let’s have a look on initial alternatives and shortcomings, which were driving creation of this ServiceAlive ..
UptimeRobot.com
One of the first free monitoring services in the internet, provides very good selection of common services such as HTTP, HTTPS and TCP port and PING. Some of limitations of free plan are:
- Monitoring interval 5 or more minutes
- Only 1 email, can’t have other email for notifications
- SSL certificate lifetime validity can’t be monitored
- Statuspage URL can’t be changed, it’s random gibbrish
More details from: https://uptimerobot.com/pricing/
BetterUptime.com, merged to uptime.betterstack.com
Probably one of the best new players on Service monitoring space offers modern UI and plenty of fancy functionality for HTTP and HTTPS based monitoring, there are few limitations from my perspective in free plan:
- Only 10 HTTP-based monitors
- no TCP and ICMP based monitors
- Monitoring interval 3 or more minutes
More details from: https://betterstack.com/uptime/pricing#features
monitoring.entireweb.com
Just a bit lesser known sibling of above options offers good mix of free web and TCP/ICMP based monitoring services along with statuspages, tho still some limitations that bother my usecases:
- Ad sponsored, somewhat disturbing sometimes
- no instant check capability, first check takes time
- checks are performed only from US monitoring node
- no detailed specs on public web
Have to register before getting to know it: https://monitoring.entireweb.com/register