Grandma Always Said There's No Such Thing as a Free Lunch
If you didn't hear it from your grandmother you've likely heard it elsewhere. There's no such thing like a free lunch. The question you must think about is, if your company has something of worth that they could sell in a profit, why are they going to just give it away for free? A lot of time, work, and investment go into quality website monitoring services and the free ones being offered aren't listed as nonprofit organizations, so how are they making their funds? When you realize how these firms make their funds, you realize free isn't free in the end.
Oftentimes a "free" website monitoring services are a simplistic package that a service will offer you to get you hooked. The thought is that once you find how vital the services are, but how much the "free" service is lacking, you'll upgrade to a paid service - usually with a higher price than had you began by searching for a paid service all along.
Not All Services Are top quality
Now, assume you do find a website monitoring service that does not up-sell and the services are really free. The real deal. A free service without any strings attached. What you ought to ask yourself again is, why is the service free? The facts lacking? Or what is it adding? Will you or your website be bombarded with advertisements to aid the funding of the service? Or perhaps the service is lacking in the features it gives you, such as ways of communication. As an example, a website monitoring service that only notifies you of website downtime via email will not do you much good in case your email is down as well as your site. You'll need a website monitoring service that may alert you via not only email, but message and phone calls to appropriate personnel as well.
You also need to find out how often your site will be checked for downtime whenever considering any web site monitoring service. Ideally you need your site checked every 60 seconds or less to make certain continuity of your site's up-time. In case your site is only checked for downtime every hour, in that case your site could potentially be down a full 59 minutes until you are even informed about a downtime issue.
In addition, you want to be sure that the website monitoring service you utilize has more than one server monitoring your internet site. If there is an electric failure at one server location, there should be other server locations spread out to ensure that your site's monitoring will not be interrupted.
When you are looking at free website monitoring solutions, the chances that a free service provides your site with the comprehensive monitoring and level of technology necessary to truly protect your site from downtime are slim to none. Since website monitoring services are probably the few services that actually pay for themselves over time, shopping for such a service based on price alone is never a good idea. Rather than looking for something free, look for a service that will actually meet your site's needs and will monitor your site adequately.