Pingdom vs. Uptime Robot vs. StatusCake
Making an awesome website that serves all the needs of the users in a user-friendly manner is not enough. It is a job well done, but you need to keep a check on how it is functioning constantly. In short, you need to monitor your website 24/7 so that any malfunctioning can be addressed immediately so that the user experience is not hampered. When it comes to website monitoring tools, the first name that comes to mind is Pingdom. It is the leader, but there are many competitors in this business, and Uptime Robot, and StatusCake are the emerging ones.
Pingdom –
There is no doubt that in terms of popularity, Pingdom is far ahead of its competitors on the list. Pingdom is basically an uptime monitoring tool. It continuous keeps an eye on the uptime off your website. As soon as it detects a downtime, it will alert the owner so that the problem can be fixed immediately. It can monitor 10 URLs at one-minute intervals with its basic plan.
Talking about why developers choose it, the tool is simple in functionality, and it is highly reliable in performance. You can monitor multiple websites automatically, and the dashboard is easy for advanced users such as developers. The alerts can be sent via email, text, and Twitter. Therefore, you will know by some means when your website is down.
It also generates detailed reports, and you can use it through its mobile app. You can also do root cause analysis completely. Another reason for its popularity has to be its integration functions. You can integrate with 17 popular platforms such as Cloudflare, Bigpanda, VictorOps, and much more, which eventually enhances its functionality.
On the downside, the service is quite expensive, and you can say that it is taking the benefits of being the leader. The user interface is not clean, and you have to spend some time to understand it completely. Therefore, the alerts are difficult to set up. Among the top companies using it are Spotify, Pinterest, Twitter, Reddit, Shopify, Coursera, and much more.
StatusCake –
StatusCake is one of the biggest competitors to Pingdom, and it does the same job but offers more flexibility. You can customize the alerts to a greater extent. There are various integrations possible that are not yet available on Pingdom. Let us check the pros and cons of the tool. The product is extremely easy to use, and therefore, there are many developers who are migrating from Pingdom to StatusCake for a better user experience. It monitors 5 URLs at 5-minute intervals.
The tool is as reliable as Pingdom, and it also monitors SSL certification. The price is cheaper, which could be another reason for migration to it. It allows real browser testing and also monitors WhoIs domain monitoring. Besides, there is a provision of domain monitoring and reporting in details. There is no such big con to talk about, and that is why it is destined to get bigger. You can customize the alert as to when and how you will be alerted, and there is provision for push notification.
Among the companies using the tool, there are names like Studio Sol, Reviewable, Fundera, Talkable, OpenGov, and much more. Among the tools that can be integrated, you have Slack, Zapier, PagerDuty, OpsGenie, and much more.
Uptime Robot –
It is the least popular among the three. It keeps checking your website after every 5 minutes and alters you accordingly. The reason why it is growing rather slowly is its UI. The user interface is very complicated and confusing to the developers. The company is working on it, and hopefully, there will be major changes coming. As far as the functionality goes, it is quite robust. It is cheap and reliable.
Coming to functions, it has instant notification through various means. There is an option for keyword monitoring, and it comes with a mobile app for push notification. It is much simpler than Pingdom, which is why some people prefer it. There are sizeable companies using it starting from Geocodio, InApplet, CybrHome, Thinkful to Mentornity, and much more.
Conclusion
If your website is quite big in size having too many pages and functionalities, and if your budget is on the higher side for monitoring and maintenance, you should opt for Pingdom without a second thought. If you are more of a small company with a limited budget, StatusCake is a better alternative for you. For startups, Uptime Robot could be better as it is cheaper. Once you can decode the UI, the rest is easy, and it monitors 50 URLs at a gap of 5 minutes. The latter two does all checking starting from HTTP/S, ICMP TCP to UDP, DNS, and Web Socket. Pingdom offers less checking with its basic plan.