Server Monitor: Review & Comparison

Just used AlertSite for a client of mine that needed both URL monitoring and Business Transaction monitoring for a real-estate web site and I am very impressed with the capabilities of the service. AlertSite provides a tool to record your own testing scripts and has a very responsive technical team to help you through the process should things get tricky. Everything can be configured from the web site including Web Monitoring, Notification, Ad-Hoc and Scheduled reports. Web Monitoring includes standard URL monitoring with break-down of DNS, Connect, Redirect, First Byte, and Content. This is great for understanding where latency is in your web site. You also get availability statistics and the ability to compare your site against 20 common benchmark sites like Google, Amazon, MSNBC, Expedia, Fidelity, and others which is great for comparing your site with some of the most popular on the web. AND, you can link your Google Analytics information with the AlertSite performance information. Business Transaction monitoring lets you record your interaction with your web site in a script, automatically validate the content sent back, and then run the script from any available AlertSite monitoring site you choose. If you run an e-commerce site, you can start a recording, navigate through your critical site pages, select a product, checkout, and logout. Then save the recording as a script, test it, and upload it to the AlertSite system for monitoring. Very easy! Notification management includes every possible media you can imagine including e-mail/text, e-mail/html, e-mail/pager, SMS, alpha-pager, AIM, VoIP Voice Message, and others. The most extensive list I have ever seen! Plus you can create notification groups, define blackout times/dates, and set up escalation paths based on alarm time/volume. There are 20 different report types with various options for just about any analysis needed in HTML, PDF, CVS formats (for making your own reports in Excel). Once you have a report defined you can save it for later review or set it up as a scheduled report that runs daily, weekly, monthly, etc. The service also has options for Server and Security Monitoring should you want that. Server monitoring includes CPU, Memory, Process, and event scripts. I have found the service to be reliable and the support is very responsive. Pricing is very affordable and tiered in a way that ensures you only pay for what you need. This has been a perfect product for my customers and I can't wait to introduce it to others.