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Website monitoring is an essential business solution that helps you ensure your web addresses stay live at all times. Downtimes may happen, though, which is why it’s important to have a website monitoring tool that instantly notifies you in these situations, identifies the issues, and fixes them promptly.
StatusCake is a popular website monitoring solution trusted by the likes of Netflix, Verizon, UNICEF, Accenture, and IBM, among others. It offers 8 types of basic uptime monitors, SSL and domain monitoring, and customizable dashboards. Its beginner-friendly approach makes it a less complex tool than most other website monitors.
Hang around till the end as we explore in more detail everything there is to know about StatusCake. From its best features, pricing, and interface to support options and best alternatives, there’s a lot to uncover.
StatusCake: Plans and pricing
StatusCake offers two paid plans in addition to a free forever plan. We found the free plan pretty bare-bones, as it comes with only 10 uptime monitors, checking at an interval of 5 minutes. Still, it can come in handy for personal projects or occasional checks.
If and when you need more, consider upgrading to its Superior plan at $20.41/month. Here, you’ll get up to 100 uptime monitors with a check interval of 1 minute. You also get page speed monitoring and server and domain monitoring on this plan.
That said, the Superior plan is admittedly a bit on the expensive side, especially considering the set of features it offers. For instance, Host Tracker offers database monitoring, detailed logs, transaction monitoring, maintenance scheduling, and customizable reports at just $18/month.
The highest-tier StatusCake plan is the Business plan priced at $66.66/month, offering 300 monitors with a check interval of just 30 seconds. This is ideal for businesses that need to constantly monitor their web addresses.
It’s worth noting that this plan also offers multi-user access, which makes it a good choice for team-oriented businesses. You also get a detailed dashboard and the option to customize email alerts as per your brand voice.
StatusCake: Features
As mentioned earlier, StatusCake offers 8 types of website checks: HTTP, HEAD, TCP, DNS, SMTP, SSH, PING, and PUSH. The monitor can check at an interval as low as 30 seconds – you can even choose to monitor constantly without any specified interval. StatusCake can run checks from as many as 28 locations, and you have the option to choose up to 3 servers while setting up a new monitor.
If you have a lot of web addresses to monitor, you can choose to add the URLs in bulk instead of creating each monitor manually. This bulk monitor supports three types of tests: HTTP, HEAD, and PING.
Besides these checks, you can even run speed test checks for various web addresses from as many as 12 locations. While this may not be much, it covers almost all major business hubs, like Singapore, Japan, and the UK.
What we liked the most about StatusCake is its ability to send notifications to an entire group of contacts at once. You can easily create a new contact list by adding the email addresses and phone numbers of the recipients.
Choose this group while setting up a new monitor, and StatusCake will send all alerts and notifications to all members in that group. This will benefit businesses that have a dedicated IT team for monitoring their web pages. The monitor offers 12 integrations to get alerts on, including Telegram, Discord, Slack, and Microsoft Teams.
Besides basic uptime monitoring, StatusCake also keeps a check on your SSL certificates and notifies you before they expire. The same is true for domain expiry. You can also set up a custom maintenance window during which the tests will be paused, preventing any negative impact on your uptime percentage and alerts.
A rather hidden feature of StatusCake is keyword monitoring. You can add specific keyword triggers while setting up monitors. For instance, if you’re monitoring a competitor’s website, you can choose to be notified only when words like ‘sale’ or ‘discount’ pop up.
StatusCake: Interface and in use
StatusCake’s interface is pretty simple and easy to use. All the steps for adding a new monitor are pretty self-explanatory. Simply add the URL and choose the monitoring frequency and contact group. Then, select the number of servers you want the check to run on and set keyword alerts, if any.
A rather noteworthy positive of StatusCake is that you can add tags to each of your monitors for better organization. For example, all uptime tests in the US (or any other region for that matter) can be clubbed together.
StatusCake also does a good job with its dashboard, allowing you to build customizable ones quickly. These dashboards give you a live view of any website errors so that you can always stay on top of your website performance.
StatusCake: Support
We found StatusCake’s support a little less prompt than some other website monitoring solutions. It offers a live chat option, which you can access from the bottom right of your screen. However, it’s not 24/7. You’ll have to wait for the support team to be online to get a reply. Moreover, there are no options to contact them directly, either.
That said, there’s a rich collection of articles and blogs explaining various features. This helps you get started and explore each feature in more detail. There are also a lot of podcasts to keep you abreast of the best monitoring practices.
StatusCake: The competition
Although StatusCake is a good monitoring solution, it may not be ideal for all businesses, especially large ones. Here are some alternatives you can consider.
Uptime.com is a comprehensive monitoring solution that offers more than 30 types of basic checks and advanced transaction monitoring, API checks, and real user monitoring (RUM). RUM checks are essential to gauge various website parameters like bounce rates and load times as it fetches data from real user interaction.
API checks help you check if all embedded APIs on your website are working perfectly or not. Similarly, using transaction checks, you can set up custom element checks on your website, such as clicking a button, adding products to your cart, checking out, and so on. That said, Uptime.com can be a tad expensive, with plans costing as high as $285/month.
Host Tracker can be a more affordable solution with plans starting at just $9.90/month. Here as well, you get the luxury of transaction and API monitors, as well as database monitoring, task cron scheduling, and maintenance scheduling. However, you won’t get RUM monitoring with Host Tracker.
StatusCake: Final verdict
StatusCake is a decent website monitoring tool with almost every single essential feature, including various types of uptime monitors, SSL and domain monitoring, speed tests, and customizable dashboards. Plus, you can set up public reporting pages and schedule downtime maintenance to manage your uptime better.
Setting up and using a monitor is pretty straightforward, too, making StatusCake a beginner-friendly choice. You can choose various locations to run tests from and form a contact group to send notifications to an entire team. Handy for businesses with dedicated departments. What’s more, you can also choose to receive these notifications on platforms like Slack, Telegram, and Discord thanks to a useful bunch of integrations.
StatusCake comes with a free plan and scales up gradually as per your needs. The paid plans start at $20.41/month, which may not be the most value-for-money option. Also, StatusCake lacks features like transaction monitoring and real user monitoring, making alternatives like Uptime.com and Uptrends a better choice.
FAQs
Who is StatusCake best for?
StatusCake is an excellent choice for small, team-oriented businesses. It offers basic uptime monitoring, speed tests, and SSL and domain checks. Plus, you can add various members of your team to a contact group who will then receive alerts simultaneously. The platform is also very easy to use, making it ideal for small businesses that may not have dedicated IT teams.
What is the difference between website monitoring and content monitoring?
A website monitor helps you keep an eye on your website and sends you alerts if it notices any downtime. This makes sure your websites stay live at all times, and you do not lose business due to random outages.
A content monitoring tool, on the other hand, notifies you whenever there’s any change in the content of a website. This comes in handy for competitor monitoring, regulatory compliance, SEO optimization, and analyzing customer sentiments.
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