At R7 Solutions, we’re experimenting with website and server monitoring services. So far, we’ve tried AlertBot and Pingdom, two of the industry leaders.

These services provide one or more remote locations from which websites or services are tested for availability. If a site is unavailable, you receive e-mails and SMS messages on your cellphone until the sites are back up again.

We’ve done this kind of monitoring using our own installed products, but are looking for an outside service since this gives us the advantage of a distributed monitoring network and advanced, professional monitoring software that is continuously maintained and improved.

Since all of our application servers reside behind firewalls (duh!), we can’t/don’t really want to use the advanced service monitoring features of AlertBot. We’d have to expose database ports and the like to the outside world, which we’re not going to do.

But we are using the website monitoring and smart content monitoring features of both systems to test that the web applications themselves and up and responding.

We’re also looking at HyperSpin and AlertFox.

When we’re done, I’ll post a review and let you know what we decided on. So far, Pingdom is winning my votes. It is easy, fast and reliable. A little pricey for what it does, but that’s true of most of the good ones.

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Kraettli Lawrence Epperson

Managing Director at JumpPhase Ventures

This blog is dedicated to providing advice, tools and encouragement from one entrepreneur to another. I want to keep this practical and accessible for the new entrepreneur while also providing enough sophistication and depth to prove useful to the successful serial entrepreneur. My target rests somewhere between the garage and the board room, where the work gets done and the hockey stick emerges.

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