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For a personal web server hosting a single application, there's the possibility of the hardware failing, and I might not realize for a week or more. I have alerts in my programs but they require internet, power, working hardware, etc.

Purpose

  • A web service that listens for packets from servers and if they don't arrive for x hours in a row, emails the owner.

Requirements

  • Less than $13 per year.
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  • So far the two recommendations provide for receiving a ping but not for sending one.
    – user193661
    Sep 14, 2015 at 4:59
  • Why do you need a webservice? Indeed why can't you check this yourself from home with a bash script and a cronjob?
    – Frames Catherine White
    Sep 14, 2015 at 11:14
  • @user193661 What do you mean by sending a ping? When the service "pings" your website, it does send data including an HTTP request to your server
    – Tom
    Sep 14, 2015 at 20:27
  • @Tom I was thinking that if a user has multiple devices to monitor on a LAN with dynamic IP address and behind a router, with no DNS or IP configuration, it would be more convenient for their devices to be the senders. So they send HTTP POST requests, including a user code, to the monitoring service.
    – user193661
    Sep 14, 2015 at 22:51
  • I think that uptimerobot is actually the best solution for all those cases though and that's the one I'm using. Even for a device that changes network location, it would be best for it to just reconfigure its DNS.
    – user193661
    Sep 14, 2015 at 22:54

2 Answers 2

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Here is another service I have used,

UptimeRobot

Monitors your websites every 5 minutes, totally free. Get alerts by e-mail, SMS, Twitter or RSS. Add up to 50 websites. Monitors can be refreshed for an instant check with a click. Supports https and authentication with user/password.

Relatively modern UI.

The free account

  • supports up to 50 monitors
  • no SMS notifications
  • doesn't support escalations (e.g. when the first contact to respond doesn't acknowledge the downtime, a second contact is alerted). Use BinaryCanary for that.

Paid accounts starts at $4.50 per month

UptimeRobot UI

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NewRelic Synthetics

NewRelic Synthetics I think is exactly what your looking for. With this service you can,

  • 50 Free "Pings" and with "pings" you can
  • 24 Hour Data Retention
  • Plan last forever (not a trial)
  • Set checking intervals as low as 1 minute
  • Up to 9 monitoring locations all over the world
  • Set text within the webpage for the ping to check for
  • Setup email alerts
  • Monitoring includes results like,
    • Load time over different monitoring locations
    • Cool looking graphs

NewRelic Synthetics UI

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  • 1
    Integrate slack with NewRelic and you get notifications on your device/phone when things go bad. Wonderful feature: slack.com
    – André Christoffer Andersen
    Sep 14, 2015 at 6:32

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