The TestMy.net Simple Website Monitor is an easy yet effective solution to a problem that gave me a headache. Uptime monitors I was using failed to detect downtime, even my hosts monitoring failed on me. Often times when servers go down the machine can still be pinged. Many pinging services and uptime monitoring services can leave you with a false sense of security. For example, when Apache or mySQL crash website monitors that reply on ping won't see the issue. This tool elegantly solves that problem.

This server-side program does not rely on ping, TestMy.net actually reads your page to make sure it's up. Once enabled one of TestMy's servers will visit your website every 5 minutes and email you as soon as downtime is detected. If for any reason the end user can't see your site, you'll know about it. It's like having someone repeatedly check your website, 24/7. Best of all, just like everything offered at TestMy.net, it's free.

All you have to do is verify site ownership by adding   <!-- TestMy.net-Monitor -->   anywhere in the page you want to monitor (recommended to be placed just before </head> tag). This is simple commented html, it's not visible to your users and doesn't do anything other than verify the page to be monitored. After adding that to your site enter the website address and how long you want it to be checked. Easy as that. No programming, no linking, no images holders and no strings attached, it's simple, free and it works. TestMy.net will keep an eye on your site so you don't have to.