Website monitoring is the process of checking the availability, performance, and functionality of a website.

It’s an essential, and on-going task for web developers and owners to ensure that their websites are always online, fast, and user-friendly.

Effective website monitoring can help detect and resolve issues, prevent downtime, improve user experience, and optimize website performance.

UptimeRobot is a service that monitors your website’s uptime and alerts you when it goes down. By integrating UptimeRobot with RunCloud, you can monitor all of your websites hosted on RunCloud servers, and access a number of features and benefits from both.

In this article, we will show you how to use UptimeRobot and RunCloud together for website monitoring. We’ll cover the following topics:

Understanding UptimeRobot

UptimeRobot is a service that monitors your website’s uptime and alerts you when it goes down.

It achieves this by sending requests to your website at regular intervals and checking the response status code, response time, and keyword presence. If the response is not satisfactory, UptimeRobot will notify you via email, SMS, webhook, or other method of your choice.

UptimeRobot has several features and benefits that make it a popular choice for website monitoring. Some of them are:

  • Free and paid plans: UptimeRobot offers a free plan that allows you to monitor up to 50 websites with 5-minute intervals, and 2 alert contacts. You can also upgrade to a paid plan that gives you more websites, shorter intervals, more alert contacts, advanced settings, and premium support.
  • Multiple types of checks: UptimeRobot supports different types of checks for your websites, such as HTTP(S), ping, port, keyword, and heartbeat. You can choose the type of check that suits your website’s needs – and customize the settings accordingly.
  • Various notification methods: UptimeRobot can alert you via various methods should your website go down or come back up. You can choose from email, SMS, voice call, webhook, Telegram, Slack, Discord, Pushbullet, Pushover, and more. You can also set different alert contacts for different websites and scenarios.
  • Status pages: UptimeRobot allows you to create public or private status pages for your websites. You can display the uptime and performance data of your websites on these pages, and share them with your visitors or clients if you wish. You can also customize the look and feel of your status pages with your own logo, domain name, colors, etc.

Different Monitor Types

UptimeRobot supports different types of monitors to check the availability, performance, and functionality of websites or web services. Here is a brief explanation of each type of monitor:

  • HTTP: This type of monitor sends an HTTP or HTTPS request to a website, and checks the response status code and response time. If the status code is not 2xx (success) or 3xx (redirection), or if the response time exceeds a certain threshold, the monitor will alert you that the website is either down, or slow.
  • Keyword: This monitor also sends an HTTP or HTTPS request to a website, but it checks the presence or absence of a specific word or phrase in the response body (typically HTML or JSON). You can choose to be alerted if the keyword is either found or not found on the website. This can help you verify the content or functionality of your website.
  • Ping: This type of monitor sends an ICMP ping packet to an IP address or a domain name, and checks both the response time and packet loss. If the response time is too high, or if there is no response at all, the monitor will alert you that the device is unreachable or slow. This can help you check the network connectivity and availability of your servers or devices.
  • Port: This type of monitor sends a TCP or UDP packet to a specific port on an IP address or a domain name, and checks if the port is open and listening. If the port is closed or filtered, the monitor will alert you that the service is down or inaccessible. This can help you check the status and performance of various services running on your servers or devices, such as email, database, FTP, SSH, etc.
  • Heartbeat: This type of monitor requires you to send an HTTP request to a specific URL provided by UptimeRobot at regular intervals from your own server or device. If UptimeRobot does not receive a request within a certain time frame, the monitor will alert you that the server or device is down or malfunctioning. This can help you monitor recurring background jobs or intranet devices connected to the internet.

You can choose the type of monitor that suits your website’s needs, and customize the settings accordingly. 

Setting-up UptimeRobot

To use UptimeRobot to monitor your websites, you’ll need to follow these steps:

  1. Sign up for a free or paid account on UptimeRobot, and log in to your dashboard. On the top left corner, click on “Add New Monitor” to create your first monitor.
  1. Provide a suitable name for your monitor, and enter the URL of your website that needs to be monitored. Here you can also specify the frequency of your tests and other basic configuration.
  1. Next, configure the alert settings by selecting the notification methods and contacts for each monitor. If your website experience crashes, these notification channels will be used to notify the specified contact(s). 
  2. Optionally, you can create status pages for your monitors by choosing the template and options. Status pages are public pages that you can display to your customers or other stakeholders to track the health of your service.

After you have performed the above steps, you can enjoy peace of mind – UptimeRobot will now keep an eye on your websites, and notify you if anything goes wrong.

Understanding UptimeRobot Teams

Team member functionality on UptimeRobot is a feature that allows you to add your team members to your UptimeRobot account, and assign them different levels of access and notification.

You can use this feature to collaborate with your team members on website monitoring, and keep them informed of any issues or updates.

There are two types of team members that you can add on UptimeRobot:

  1. Read or write access: These are team members who can log in to your UptimeRobot account with their own credentials and perform actions such as adding, editing, or deleting monitors, alert contacts, or status pages. You can choose to give them read-only or read-write access depending on their role and responsibility. You can also choose which monitors, alert contacts, or status pages they can access or manage.
  2. Notify-only: These are team members who cannot log in to your UptimeRobot account but can receive notifications via email, SMS, or voice call when your monitors go down or come back up. You can add them as alert contacts and assign them to specific monitors. You can also customize the notification frequency and content for them.

Dos and Don’ts For Using UptimeRobot

Here are some tips and best practices for website monitoring with UptimeRobot and RunCloud:

Choose the right type of check and interval for your website

Depending on the nature and purpose of your website, you may want to use different types of checks and intervals to monitor its uptime and performance.

For example, if your website is a static HTML page, you may use a simple HTTP(S) check with a 5-minute interval. But if your website is a dynamic web application that relies on a database or an API, you may use a keyword or a heartbeat check with a 1-minute interval.

Use multiple alert contacts and methods for different scenarios

You may want to notify different people or teams when your website goes down or comes back online. For example, you may want to alert your web developer via email and SMS when your website goes down, but only alert your marketing manager via email when your website comes back up.

You can also use different notification methods for different urgency levels. For example, you may want to use a voice call for critical issues, but only use a webhook for minor issues.

Create status pages for your websites and share them with your clients

Status pages are a great way to communicate the uptime and performance of your websites to your visitors or clients. These pages can help you build trust and transparency with your audience, and reduce the number of support requests.

You can create public or private status pages for your websites using UptimeRobot, and customize them with your own logo, domain name, colors, etc.

Don’t rely on a single type of monitor, or a single alert method.

You may miss some issues or receive false positives if you only use one type of monitor or one alert method. You should use multiple types of monitors and alert methods to cover different scenarios, and ensure that you receive timely and accurate notifications.

Don’t set unrealistic expectations for your website uptime

You should understand that no website can achieve 100% uptime or perfect performance all the time. There are many factors that can affect your website’s availability and speed, such as network issues, server issues, code issues, traffic spikes, etc.

You should set realistic and reasonable goals for your website uptime and performance, and measure them against industry standards and best practices.

Final Thoughts

Website monitoring is a vital part of your web development and maintenance strategy. It can help you ensure that your websites are always online, fast, and user-friendly. By using website monitoring tools such as UptimeRobot, you can detect and resolve issues, prevent downtime, improve user experience, and optimize website performance.

But wait, there’s more! If you are looking for the best cloud hosting service provider for your websites, look no further than RunCloud.

RunCloud is a platform that allows you to easily manage your web servers and web applications on any cloud provider.

RunCloud lets you choose from a variety of cloud providers such as AWS, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, etc. and connect them to RunCloud with just a few clicks. You can then enjoy the benefits of RunCloud’s optimized web stack, backup, deployment, team collaboration, analytics, optimizer, and much more.

What are you waiting for? Join RunCloud today and take your website hosting to the next level!