When you decide to invest in website monitoring services, and you most definitely should if you're serious about the success of your business, you need to realize that not all services are created equal. If you want to invest in the services of a quality website monitor, you need to know what you should be on the lookout for. Here are five things to look for and never settle on when it comes to choosing the website monitoring service that's right for you.

There's a saying that the best things in life are free, but that's not always the case. While there are indeed great things that you can get in life without paying a dime for them, website monitoring service just isn't one of them. Here's what you need to keep in mind if you've been considering a free website monitor to stay on top of your website downtime.

Those of us who are familiar with blogs and websites that allow us to give our two cents and place our comments on the pages of the site know just how empowering such an ability can be. Your voice can be heard by not only the webmasters, but by the masses. But what happens when a website's comments section isn't working as it should be? The masses are silenced. That's exactly what happened last month when Disqus's comments services went down, leaving the Twitter community abuzz.

Tip 1. Make Sure Themes and Software Are Supported

The last thing you want to do is switch your entire site over, get ready to go live, and discover that themes and software aren't supported by your new web host. Always check for compatibility before making a choice when choosing a new hosting provider.

As a business website owner, you are probably well aware of exactly what it is that a quality website monitoring service can do for your business's reputation as well as its profits. What you may not be equally aware of, however, is how that very same service can actually benefit your website's customers as well. Before you assume that your business is the only one to benefit from the website monitoring service you invest in, take the following things into consideration.

Most webmasters know the value of good website analytics software. They also know the value of a quality website monitoring service. The question is, as a webmaster, do you know the ways in which these two services can work together to strengthen the efficiency of your site while minimizing website downtime and maximizing business profits?

When it comes to the success of your online business, failure should not be an option. Unfortunately, if you don't have a handle on your site's downtime, failure is a very real possibility. The good news is that you don't have to leave the success of your site up to chance. By implementing quality website monitoring services, you can ensure that downtime has a minimal impact on your businesses success and profitability.

If you're like most website managers, you put quite a bit of effort into making sure your site looks great, is safe from hackers, and is ranked well in the top search engines. Unfortunately, if these are the only things you're focusing on, it's not enough. The truth is that the performance and a vailability of your site are just as important, if not more so, than how your site looks or how well it is ranked in Google. After all, if customers find your site using Google but can't access it due to the fact that your site is down, you're losing money and your reputation is suffering as well.

Anyone who owns or operates a website knows that maintaining the uptime of that site is of the utmost importance. Dreaded downtime results in lost profits, reduced consumer confidence, and even a drop in search engine rankings. While knowing that downtime is enemy number one is important, understanding what causes downtime and how to minimize it are fundamental to the success of your online business. Forget everything you think you know about downtime.

What Is Heartbleed?

The "Heartbleed" bug in OpenSSL appears to have affected a majority of web servers secured by SSL, worldwide. The bug could allow an attacker to gain access to encrypted data, private keys, names, passwords, etc.

Read more about the bug: http://heartbleed.com

What We Did

Upon learning of the vulnerability we did a thorough analysis of our systems and patched affected servers within 48 hours. We've also replaced our digital SSL certificate and revoked the old one.