The Best Website Monitoring Software & Tools for 2024

How do I Choose the Best Website Performance Monitoring Tool?

The most important thing to consider when choosing a web performance monitoring solution is whether you're interested in measuring overall site speed, individual page load times, errors, or something else entirely.

You might also want to look into the availability of mobile apps, API access, and integrations with third-party applications like email marketing platforms.

Here is a list of what to look at to choose the best website monitoring software for your needs.

Check for URL Monitoring Frequency

When using a website monitoring software, it pings you website at a given time consistently to make your your website is up and is loading correctly.

Most web monitoring tools check URLs one time per set number of minutes. About 5 minutes is fine for most sites, but there are some exceptions where you might want to monitor your site more frequently. 

Here are three reasons why URL monitoring on your site is important.

1. The number of pages you have on your site: If you have too many pages on your site, it could mean that you're missing out on traffic because people aren't finding what they're looking for. If you find yourself having to scroll down multiple times to find something, then you probably have too many pages. Consider consolidating your pages into fewer ones.
2. Loading speed of your site: A slow loading speed isn't good for anyone. People won't stick around long enough to read anything, let alone buy anything. A fast load time is important for both mobile and desktop visitors.
3. You Need To Check For Broken Links: Broken links are like little roadblocks in your way. They prevent you from reaching your goal - whether it's driving sales or getting more leads. When you notice broken links on your site, fix them immediately.

Consider integrated server and log monitoring

Server monitoring tools are great because they give you real-time data about your web application's performance. But they're often too complicated for small businesses to use effectively.

Log monitoring gives you visibility into everything that happens on your servers, allowing you to make better decisions about your infrastructure. And it's easier to set up than integrated server monitoring.

Log monitoring software lets you monitor your web applications in one place. You'll know exactly where things go wrong, and you'll be able to identify trends and patterns quickly. This makes it easy to spot issues early on and take action.

You can use log monitoring to troubleshoot problems like slow database queries, high memory usage, and errors. With this type of tool, you don't need to rely on error reports from third parties; you can find out what happened yourself.

If you want to learn more about why you should consider log monitoring, read our guide to the benefits of log monitoring.

User experience (UX) testing is used to deter

User experience (UX) testing is used to determine whether a product meets customer expectations. However, it takes a lot of resources to conduct UX tests, and many companies are unable to afford such tests due to limited budgets.

This is where synthetic and real user monitoring come into play. These methods help businesses understand the performance of their sites without having to spend money on conducting actual usability studies.

While there are several different types of UX testing, most focus on one aspect of the user experience. For example, some look at how fast a site loads while others examine how easy it is to navigate. While both approaches are important, neither provides a full view of the overall user experience.

To fill this gap, companies often use a combination of synthetic and real user monitoring. In this method, test subjects are given fake accounts to simulate real visitors. They are asked to perform tasks on the site, like navigating menus or filling out forms.

Once the task is complete, the data collected is compared against data gathered from real customers. Companies can then analyze the differences in order to identify areas that need improvement.

You may find that its common for these features to be available from the same website monitoring software provider, but its not always the case. So, make sure to take time to search for an all round website monitoring tool.

Testing locations (Countries)

There are many factors that affect your website’s speed, including where it’s hosted, what browser you use, and even whether you’re in the United States or Australia. But one thing that doesn’t change is the fact that you want your website to load quickly for everyone.

If you don’t test your website’s global performance, you could miss out on opportunities to make improvements. An important tip is to choose your hosting provider carefully.

The first step towards testing your website’s performance is choosing a hosting provider. You’ll want to choose a web host that offers a variety of tools to monitor and optimize your website’s loading speeds. Some hosts offer free tools while others charge monthly fees. To find out more about the best hosting providers, check out our list of the best website hosting providers.

Support for multiple browsers

There are different versions of browser (Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc.) out there and each version of browser has its own quirks. Testing your site on different versions of browsers helps you figure out what works best for your audience and how it looks on different platforms.

Different browsers behave differently, so checking your site on different browsers allows you to see how well your site performs on different platforms.

You might think that your site loads fast regardless of what browser someone uses. However, there are often differences in how browsers handle certain elements like images and JavaScript.

For example, Internet Explorer 8 and earlier versions had issues displaying CSS3 animations. This meant that sites built with those technologies wouldn’t work properly in older browsers. Thankfully, most modern browsers now support CSS3 animations.

To see if your site works correctly in different browsers, try using Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Edge, IE11, and IE10. You can download each browser from the respective developer’s website. While you’re downloading the browser, be sure to install the latest version of Adobe Flash Player.

Solid alerting capabilities

Setting up alerts across multiple channels such as Slack, email, SMS, Twitter, Facebook Messenger, etc. is important to ensure you’re notified quickly whenever something goes awry. Alerts can help you catch issues early, before they cause damage. However, false positives are common and can waste your team’s time. Here are some tips to avoid false positives and save your team’s precious time.

Many webmasters don't realize how important it is to monitor their site 24/7. If something does happen, such as a server outage, they won't notice it immediately because most monitoring tools send out emails or text messages once every hour.

This isn't very helpful when dealing with a real emergency. But what happens if there's a problem during the day while nobody is looking? What happens if you're away on vacation and someone notices that one of your servers is down? What happens if you have a major security breach and you want to notify everyone immediately?

You need a tool that gives you immediate notification that something is wrong without having to wait for help. Fortunately, there are several companies offering solid alerting capabilities.