Grandma Always Said There isn't any Such Thing as a Free Lunch
If you didn't hear it from your grandmother you've likely heard it somewhere else. There's no such thing as a free lunch. The question you must ask yourself is, if a company has something of value that they could sell at a profit, why would they 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, now 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" services are 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.
Don't assume all Services Are Created Equal
Now, suppose you do find a website monitoring service that does not up-sell and the services really free. The real deal. A free service without strings attached. What you need to ask yourself again is, exactly why is the service free? The facts lacking? Or what is it adding? Are you going to or your website be bombarded with advertisements to guide the funding of the service? Or maybe the service is with a lack of the features it offers, such as methods of communication. As an example, a website monitoring service that just notifies you of website downtime via email isn't going to do you much good if your email is down together with your site. You will need a website monitoring service that will alert you via not only email, but text and phone calls to appropriate personnel too.
You also need to find out how often your site will be checked for downtime whenever considering any website monitoring service. Ideally you would like your site checked every A minute or less to make certain continuity of one's site's up-time. If the site is only checked for downtime every hour, then your site could potentially be down a complete 59 minutes prior to being even made aware of a downtime issue.
Additionally, you want to be sure that the website monitoring service you have has multiple server monitoring your internet site. If there is an electric failure at one server location, there must be other server locations spread 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 will provide your site with the comprehensive monitoring and level of technology needed to truly protect your internet site from downtime are slim to none. Since website monitoring services are probably the few services that truly pay for themselves as time passes, shopping for this kind of service based on price alone isn't a good idea. Rather than looking for something free, look for a service that will actually meet your site's needs and definately will monitor your internet site adequately.