While "free" might seem like a good thing, sometimes it really is too good to be true and as many people learn, you get what you pay for. If you're not paying anything, you're probably not getting very much. In fact, some companies lure you in with a "free" service that just can't serve all of your website monitoring needs so you eventually upgrade to the paid plan, and it's not really free after all. In such cases, the rate may have been higher than what it would have been had you gone with a "paid" service to being with.

Website monitoring has become a must-have in the world of online commerce. Some people, however, may not see why website monitoring and server monitoring are so crucial in today's online day and age. In the era of ecommerce, what exactly happens to websites that do not have monitoring service in place? Here are some cautionary tales to help you understand why downtime is so dreaded among those in the know.

While the majority of website owners realize the crucial importance of having quality website monitoring service in place, there are still some who are not too sure whether or not they need it. There are even some who believe that the uptime guarantee of their website hosting provider is enough to prevent prolonged downtime of their websites. Before you decide you can do without website monitoring service in place, here are some things you need to consider.

Nowadays almost everyone knows the value of website monitoring services. What they don't always understand is that not all website monitoring is created equal. There are different methods of monitoring the uptime of a website, and knowing those differences means ensuring that you choose the website monitoring service that can best serve your needs and the needs of your business.

With Black Friday and Cyber Monday being right around the corner, chances are that you have ramped up your site's capabilities to handle the anticipated influx of traffic and sales. This is the one time of year your business can rake in the sales and your customers expect your site to be accessible and performing. If your site goes down during these vital shopping days, that downtime can spiral into lost sales, lost reputation, and a loss of repeat customers. What can you do to make sure your site stays up and running this holiday season?

According to Inc. Magazine, accessibility is the most critical measure of your site's performance. After all, if a customer is unable to access your site then they most certainly can't do business with you. If your customers or clients are unable to do business with you, then your profits are not likely going to be anywhere near what you had hoped when you first set out on your business endeavor. This, above all, is why website monitoring is crucial to the success of your online business.

You may have the best website in the world. Perhaps you have invested thousands into SEO services and have amazing content and a layout that makes your competition drool. You may be surprised to discover that if you do not have website monitoring services in place, your business may be going nowhere fast. Here are four reasons why you absolutely must have a quality website monitoring service in place if your serious about your online success.

There is one thing that every single website owner should fear, and that is the blacklist. What is the blacklist? It is a list of sites that search engines refuse to include in their search results. Why is it like the plague to website owners? Because the majority of a site's traffic comes from these search engines, which is why so many websites invest a good amount of money into SEO. However, no matter how much you invest in SEO, if your site becomes blacklisted, it's money down the drain and your business will likely flounder. Here are some things to keep in mind to avoid it.

Many online businesses understand what website monitoring is and realize that sometimes it is the one thing that can help make or break their online business. Server monitoring, on the other hand, is still often misunderstood. Many online business owners think that website monitoring and server monitoring are one in the same (as they can sometimes be offered as a package). The truth is, the two services do not always go hand in hand. While both services can be crucial to the success of an online business, they do not always work in the same way.

Last night the support desk was pinged with several support requests all relating to DNS issues. DNS issues are particularly difficult to understand sometimes, especially when we are reporting your site is down but you can access it in a browser. Other monitoring services may also be reporting your site is up. Unlike your browser and those other services we do not cache any results from the lookup process. That means that each time we resolve your domain name we are getting an 'authoritative' response.