Initial thoughts on Pingdom
After reading about some recent network issues at DreamHost, I decided it was time to up the ante on my server uptime monitoring and reporting to make sure that I'm notified if there's an issue with any of my hosts. I went with an account at Pingdom after reading some favorable reviews. I signed up for the 30-day trial, then upgraded to a yearly account after they presented me with a huge discount offer (1 year for $35.82 USD instead of $119, or something like that). I'm a sucker for deals.
Right off the bat I ran into an error using their signup form: a cell number was required and I don't use a cell phone. I simply inputted my home phone and proceeded without any issue, but I think it's presumptuous to assume that everyone with a website has a cell phone. (Cell service is spotty where I live.)
A much larger issue however was the extremely slow performance of the Pingdom website. Pingdom.com was unbelievably slow for me, while other sites were running just fine (not a connection issue.) Perhaps I've just stumbled in on a bad day.
Next, I went to set up some server checks and discovered I only get FIVE with my account! I was expecting more, but additional checks are priced at $0.50/month, cheap enough.
I was unsure about what some of the fields were about, so I clicked the "helpful" little question mark icon next to the fields for more info. Not so helpful though because I simply was brought back up to the top of the page–no popup window opened, and no notice from Firefox that a popup tried to open. I don't have any strict anti-popup blockers installed or anything. Hmm. I fired up IE7 and login. The layout of the form is a bit whacked in IE, but Hi-Ho Silver, the little question mark icons do something in IE! They open a layer beneath the field with explanatory text. I can also see the Pingdom logo in the header with IE–it's not visible in Firefox. This just can't be! Pingdom is not Firefox compatible?! Wow.
So far, my experience with Pingdom hasn't been great. I'm hoping the service blows my little introductory escapade out of the water. If you're not willing to take the same risk, then check out some of these free monitoring services:
UPDATE: I booted up my laptop and logged into Pingdom and discovered that the JavaScript effects on the Check setup page worked just fine. It would appear then that my issues with this on my main workstation are related to a Firefox plugin that I have installed, not a browser incompatibility on Pingdom's site.
June 15th, 2007 at 12:11 am
I use site24×7.com and it works just as published / expected. It alerted me at critical times. Their UI is neat and simple to navigate.
Try site24×7 . It wont let you down.
June 15th, 2007 at 10:35 am
Nice to hear a positive review of site24×7 from a user of the service, thanks Siva! So far, my servers have been running well, so they haven't put Pingdom to the test yet. I think I'll sign up at site24×7 as well and run the two services side-by-side to test their performance.