12 best free website uptime and downtime monitoring services

It is very important to know as soon as possible when your website is going down. The faster you know, the faster you can fix it.

But what if you are unwilling to pay for uptime monitoring because your business is new or it is a personal project? Or maybe you just don’t need any extra functionality.

I have good news! There are many very good free-tier options available!

If you are not sure about the criteria to look for while choosing an uptime monitoring service, here are a few important things you should consider:

  • How many monitors do I need? That depends on how many domains, subdomains, and servers/hostings you use. Ideally, you want a monitor for each subdomain.
  • How fast do I want to check uptime? The quicker, the better. I would suggest using services that check it at least once every 5 minutes, or you will know that your website is down with a big delay.
  • What’s the most convenient way to receive notifications? I prefer to get it in my Telegram messenger. Perhaps you’d like to get it in Slack or via voice call? Different services have different options to choose from.
  • Which other functionality do I need? Now or in the future, as your website grows. Some of the services include page speed monitors, server health monitoring, etc.
  • Do I need a status page? The status page is a public webpage you present to your visitors so they may check themselves if some of your servers are down. Here is an example. Not all services offer this.

Do not overthink it, though. It is quite easy to replace one service with another in the future. You can also use multiple at once and then choose the best one.

Ok, let’s begin. Below are the best free uptime/downtime website monitoring services I found:

UptimeRobot

I’m not going to lie: UptimeRobot is my favorite and has been for many years. So I’m probably biased in favor of it. I have a guide on how to use it if you are a complete beginner.

It offers a very good free plan as well as paid plans starting from $5 for 10 monitors and $15 for 50. Many notification channels are available as well.

  • 50 monitors with 5-minute checks
  • Notifications: email, SMS, voice call, push, webhook, Telegram, email-to-SMS, Twitter, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Chat, Discord, Pushbullet, Pushover, Splunk, and Zapier.
  • Monitor types: HTTP, Keyword, ping, port
  • Status pages are supported
  • Has a mobile app.

StatusCake

It offers not only uptime but full website monitoring: page speed, domain, SSL, and server. Everything except server monitoring is available on their free plan.

  • 10 monitors with 5-minute checks
  • Notifications: email, Webhook, Telegram, Datadog, Discord, Mattermost, Microsoft Teams, OpsGenie, PagerDuty, Public Tweet, Pushbullet, Pushover, Slack, VictorOps.
  • Monitor types: HTTP, HEAD, TCP, DNS, SMTP, SSH, PING, push
  • Status pages are supported
  • Has a mobile app
  • + Checking for mixed content
  • + 1 page speed monitor, 1 domain monitor, and 1 SSL monitor.

BetterUptime

It offers log monitoring and incident management in addition to uptime monitoring. Very sleek, dark interface, as a geek, I love it! 🙂

  • 10 monitors with 3-minute checks
  • Notifications: Email
  • Monitor types: HTTP, HEAD
  • Status pages are supported
  • Has a mobile app
  • + SSL check
  • + Regions to check from: North America, Europe, Asia, Australia

FreshWorks

This company offers a very wide range of products, from their support desk service to marketing automation. Monitoring is simple, though: there are no server or log monitoring.

  • 50 monitors with 1-minute checks
  • Notifications: Email, FreshDesk, FreshService, Webhook, Slack, Twilio, Zapier
  • Monitor types: HTTP, ping, TCP, DNS
  • Status pages are supported
  • + 11 locations to check from located in North America, Europe, and Asia.

PingMonit

Simple website monitoring, with fewer features than UptimeRobot, but it does the job well. I used it before.

  • 3 monitors with 1-minute checks
  • Notifications: email, Slack, Webhooks, push, SMS
  • Monitor types: HTTP, Keyword
  • + Checks from 20 geographical zones

UptimeDoctor

Simple website monitoring with many servers worldwide and an outdated interface.

  • 5 monitors with 1-minute checks
  • Notifications: Email, SMS, push
  • Monitor types: HTTP, Keyword
  • + 49 global monitoring stations

Site24x7

I think it is the most advanced monitoring solution in this article. In addition, it offers server, cloud, network, and log monitoring.

  • 50 monitors with 5-minute checks (they say 10-minute, but you can create 5-minute checks)
  • Notifications: email, push.
  • Monitor types: HTTP, DNS, UDP, POP, SMTP, FTP, ping, SOAP, NTP, ISP, custom ports, mail delivery, REST API
  • Status pages are supported
  • Has a mobile app.
  • + 3 locations for rechecks (when the website is down, it will recheck from another location)
  • + Page load time monitor
  • + SSL/TLS certificate expiry monitoring
  • + Domain name expiry monitoring

Uptimia

Full website monitoring solution. Offers not only uptime monitoring but transaction monitoring, speed monitoring, and real user monitoring as well.

  • 1 monitor with 5-minute checks
  • I can’t tell more yet as they don’t advertise it, will add the information after my trial ends 🙂

Has a 30-day free trial for any other plans as well.

Uptrends

Another full-monitoring solution. In addition, it offers cloud, server, network, on-site, and other types of monitoring. It’s better to choose it only if you plan to use one of their other services, as their free plan is very limited.

  • 1 monitor with 5-minute checks
  • Notifications: email
  • Monitor types: HTTP
  • Has a mobile app.
  • + SSL certificate errors check
  • + Checks from 10 locations in Europe and North America

Options aren’t all that great

There are some other uptime/downtime monitoring services that do offer a free plan, but only for a checkmark. I separated them into a separate category of services I do not recommend using for free.

Some of them have good functionality on their paid plans or have been popular in the past. That’s why I don’t want to completely remove them.

Montastic – 9 monitors with 30-minute checks. That’s too slow! Do not recommend it.

Host-tracker – 2 monitors with 30-minute checks.

SiteUptime – 1 monitor with 30-minute checks from 11 locations, with only email alerts.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are many very good options to start using website monitoring services for free.

I recommend that you try a couple of them at once and then pick the one you like best. That’s how I personally chose the one I’m using right now.

If I forgot any service that has free plans, feel free to mention it in the comments below.