Best website uptime monitoring software, 9 tools compared
Website uptime monitoring software checks your site from outside on a schedule and alerts you when it stops answering. We compared nine tools on free plans, check intervals, multi-location confirmation, alerts and price, using facts from each vendor's own site. For WordPress, WordPress uptime monitoring from three locations is built into WPCentrify.
Our quick picks
Website uptime monitoring software checks your site from outside every few seconds or minutes and alerts you when it stops answering. Our quick picks, from facts on each vendor's own site:
- Best for WordPress portfolios: WPCentrify (our product), 60-second checks from three locations, part of a full management platform.
- Best free plan: UptimeRobot, 50 monitors at 5-minute checks.
- Best for on-call teams: Better Stack, with phone and SMS alerts and outages confirmed from 3 locations.
- Best self-hosted: Uptime Kuma, free and open source with 20-second checks.
- Best free option for one WordPress site: Jetpack Monitor, 5-minute checks confirmed from 3 servers.
Whatever you choose, look for confirmation from more than one location before an alert, content checks rather than status codes alone, and SSL and domain expiry checks.
What website uptime monitoring software does
Website uptime monitoring software is a service outside your server that requests your website on a schedule, from one or more places in the world, and checks that it answers correctly and quickly. When it does not, the service alerts you by email, SMS, phone, push or chat. Most tools also record response times, keep a downtime history for uptime reports, watch SSL certificates and domain expiry, and publish status pages for customers.
It has to run outside the site on purpose: a plugin inside a website cannot report that the website is down. If you want the background first, our guide on how to monitor website uptime explains check intervals, locations and uptime percentages without comparing products.
How we compared these uptime monitoring tools
We looked at the questions that decide whether a monitor is useful in practice: is there a free plan, how often can it check, does it confirm an outage from more than one location before alerting, how does it alert you, and what does the cheapest paid plan cost. Every fact comes from the vendor's own pricing, feature or documentation pages, checked on 10 October 2026, and where a vendor's pages contradict each other we say so.
One of these tools is ours: WPCentrify. We list it first because this site is about WordPress, and we have tried to describe its limits as plainly as everyone else's. We use no affiliate links. Our comparison methodology explains how we research and correct these pages.
Uptime monitoring software at a glance
| Tool | Free plan | Fastest check | Outage confirmed from | Alerts | Paid from |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WPCentrify | Free during early access | 60 seconds | 3 locations (Malaysia, Canada, USA) on more than one provider, after 3 failed checks | Announced at launch | |
| UptimeRobot | 50 monitors, 5-minute checks | 15 seconds (Scale plan) | Retries within one region | Email, SMS, voice, Slack, Teams and more | $12 a month, billed yearly |
| Better Stack | 10 monitors, 3-minute checks, personal projects | 30 seconds | At least 3 of 4 or more locations | Phone, SMS, email, push, Slack, Teams | $29 a month, billed yearly |
| StatusCake | 10 monitors, 5-minute checks | 30 seconds (Business plan) | Optional recheck from up to 10 servers | Email, SMS, push, webhook, Slack and more | $20.41 a month, billed yearly |
| Site24x7 | Yes; limits differ across its pages | 1 minute on the entry plan, faster on higher plans | Multi-location rechecks | Email, SMS, phone, push, Slack | $9 a month, billed yearly |
| Pingdom | No; 30-day trial | 1 minute | A second check before alerting | Email, SMS, push, webhooks | $16.50 a month, billed yearly |
| Uptime.com | No; 30-day money-back guarantee | 1 minute | Not stated on its public pages | Email, SMS, phone, push | About $7 a month, billed yearly |
| Uptime Kuma | Free and open source, self-hosted | 20 seconds | One location: wherever you host it | Email, Slack, Discord, Telegram and 90+ more | Free; you pay for hosting |
| Jetpack Monitor | Free for WordPress sites | 5 minutes free, 1 minute through Jetpack Manage | 3 servers in different places must all fail | Email and app push; SMS with the upgrade | Upgrade price not stated |
All facts from each vendor's own pricing, feature and documentation pages, checked 10 October 2026. Prices are the lowest paid plan shown and exclude tax. Vendors change plans often, so check before you buy. Disclosure: WPCentrify is our product, and we do not use affiliate links.
The 9 website uptime monitoring tools, one by one
1. WPCentrify: best for WordPress portfolios
WPCentrify is a WordPress website management platform, and uptime monitoring is one part of it. (Disclosure: it is our product.) Every connected site is checked every 60 seconds from three locations, in Malaysia, Canada and the USA, run on more than one provider. A site is only reported down when locations on different providers agree, after three failed checks in a row, and it is marked back up after two good checks. You get one email per confirmed outage, with the error returned and which locations saw it.
Checks look past the status code: they look for expected content on the page, watch specific URLs and pages behind a login, and cover SSL certificate expiry, domain expiry and DNS changes. Each incident sits next to what else happened on the site, such as an update that ran minutes before, and uptime feeds per-client SLA tracking, status pages and client reports. Slow responses are flagged too, alongside performance monitoring of Core Web Vitals. Because it is the same dashboard that runs safe updates, backups and security monitoring, there is no separate tool to set up per site. Read more about WordPress uptime monitoring from three locations.
Good for: agencies, freelancers and businesses running several WordPress sites who want uptime in the same place as everything else.
Watch out for: it monitors WordPress sites only, and alerts are by email for now. It is free during early access, with prices announced at launch.
2. UptimeRobot: best free plan
UptimeRobot's free plan is the most generous on this list: 50 monitors checked every 5 minutes, a status page, keyword monitoring and up to five integrations. Its terms allow commercial use. Paid plans start with Solo at $12 a month billed yearly, with 60-second checks; Team and Scale go down to 30 and 15 seconds.
It checks from four regions (North America, Europe, Asia and Australia), but choosing several regions needs a paid plan, and its help center says a suspected outage is retried within one region rather than confirmed elsewhere.
Good for: a large number of simple monitors on a small budget.
Watch out for: single-region confirmation can mean more false alarms, and webhooks, Zapier and PagerDuty need the Team plan or higher.
3. Better Stack: best for on-call teams
Better Stack Uptime combines monitoring with incident management. Its documentation says every monitor is checked from at least four locations by default and an incident is only created after at least three fail, which keeps false alarms low. Paid plans check as often as every 30 seconds and include unlimited phone calls and SMS, plus Slack, Microsoft Teams, webhooks and Zapier.
The free tier covers 10 monitors at 3-minute checks for personal projects. Paid plans start with a Responder license at $29 a month billed yearly, with extra monitors and status pages charged on top. Browser-based transaction checks cost extra.
Good for: teams with an on-call rota that need phone and SMS escalation.
Watch out for: costs grow with responders, monitors and status pages, so price your real setup.
4. StatusCake: best for checking from many countries
StatusCake runs checks from 43 locations in 30 countries, and paid accounts choose where tests run. Its FAQ says it can optionally confirm downtime from up to 10 additional servers. The free plan covers 10 uptime monitors at 5 minutes plus one page speed, one SSL and one domain monitor.
Paid plans start at $20.41 a month billed yearly (Superior, 1-minute checks) and go to 30 seconds on Business. SSL and domain monitoring are on every plan.
Good for: sites with visitors in many countries that want checks close to them.
Watch out for: confirmation from extra servers is optional, so turn it on.
5. Site24x7: best for monitoring more than websites
Site24x7 is a broad monitoring suite: websites, servers, cloud services, networks and real user monitoring, with 130+ locations overall. Its website monitoring uses multi-location rechecks before alerting, and includes SSL and domain expiry, keyword checks and transaction monitors. The Web Uptime plan starts at $9 a month billed yearly for 25 websites with 1-minute checks.
It also offers a WordPress plugin for real user monitoring. Its pages give different figures for the free plan and for location counts on the entry plan, so confirm the details in a trial.
Good for: teams that want website uptime in the same tool as server and infrastructure monitoring.
Watch out for: a large product with plan details that are easy to misread.
6. Pingdom: best for uptime plus real user monitoring
SolarWinds Pingdom checks from 100+ servers worldwide at a default interval of once a minute, and says it always performs a second check before alerting. HTTPS checks warn about expiring SSL certificates, and a string check confirms expected content. Real user monitoring is available as a separate product.
There is no free plan, only a 30-day trial. The entry Synthetics plan with 10 uptime checks starts at $16.50 a month billed yearly, or $18 billed monthly.
Good for: businesses that want an established name and real user data alongside uptime.
Watch out for: no free tier, and choosing check locations needs a higher account level.
7. Uptime.com: best for status pages and reporting
Uptime.com lists 100+ probe servers worldwide and checks every minute on its pricing page. Plans include SSL and domain expiry checks, blacklist and malware checks, transaction checks, and public or private status pages. Alerts go by email, SMS, phone and push, with 20+ integrations.
There is no free plan, but there is a 30-day money-back guarantee. Website Monitoring starts at $9 a month, or $84 a year (about $7 a month).
Good for: businesses that publish status pages to customers.
Watch out for: how many locations must agree before an alert is not stated on its public pages.
8. Uptime Kuma: best self-hosted option
Uptime Kuma is free, open-source software you run yourself, in Docker or on Node.js. It checks HTTP(S), keywords, JSON responses, TCP, ping, DNS and more at intervals down to 20 seconds, shows certificate information, publishes status pages and sends alerts through email, Slack, Discord, Telegram and more than 90 other services.
The catch is in the word "self-hosted". It checks from wherever you run it, which is one location, and if that server goes down, so does your monitoring.
Good for: technical teams that want full control and no subscription.
Watch out for: single-location checks and the work of keeping it running, ideally on a different provider from your sites.
9. Jetpack Monitor: best free option for one WordPress site
Jetpack Monitor is a free WordPress feature, switched on in Jetpack's settings. It checks the home page every five minutes. When it suspects an outage, three servers in different places recheck, and you are alerted only if all three fail. Alerts go to the email of the connected WordPress.com account and to the Jetpack and WordPress apps.
One-minute checks, SMS and extra email recipients come with an upgrade through Jetpack Manage, at a price not listed on its pages.
Good for: a single WordPress site that already runs Jetpack.
Watch out for: it checks the home page only, alerts go to one account, and there is no content check, status page or SSL monitoring mentioned.
Free website uptime monitoring: what you actually get
Free plans are good enough for many small sites, as long as you know their limits:
- UptimeRobot: 50 monitors at 5 minutes, one region of confirmation.
- StatusCake: 10 uptime monitors at 5 minutes, plus one SSL and one domain monitor.
- Better Stack: 10 monitors at 3 minutes, for personal projects.
- Jetpack Monitor: free for WordPress sites, home page only, every 5 minutes.
- Uptime Kuma: free software, but you provide and maintain the server.
The common trade-offs are five-minute intervals, which can miss short outages and delay alerts for long ones, single-location checks that cause false alarms, and few alert channels. If you used Freshping, note that it has been discontinued: Freshworks disabled free accounts on 6 March 2026.
How to choose website uptime monitoring software
- List what you need to watch. Count the sites and the pages that matter on each: home page, checkout, booking form, login.
- Decide how fast you need to know. One-minute checks for sites that earn money every minute, five minutes for the rest.
- Require confirmation from more than one location. It is the single biggest cut in false alarms.
- Check what is tested, not only whether it answers. Look for content checks, SSL and domain expiry, and response time alerts.
- Match the alerts to who responds. Email for one person, SMS or phone for an on-call rota, a shared channel for a team.
- Price it per site, not per plan. Divide the plan price by the monitors you really need, including extra pages and status pages.
A short trial on your real sites answers most of these questions faster than any comparison table, including this one.
What WordPress sites need from an uptime monitor
Any of these tools can watch a WordPress site. WordPress just fails in some ways that a simple check misses:
- Broken pages that still return 200. A white screen, a "critical error" message or a database connection error can come back with a normal status code. A content check, looking for text that should be on the page, catches them.
- Failures after updates. Many WordPress outages start with a plugin or theme update. A monitor that shows what changed just before the outage saves the first twenty minutes of an investigation. Our WordPress site down checklist works through the usual causes, and WordPress automatic updates explains when updates run on their own.
- Pages that earn money. The home page can be fine while checkout or a booking form is broken. Monitor those URLs too.
- Many sites at once. Ten tools handle forty monitors fine. What they do not do is connect an outage to the rest of the work on that site: updates, backups, security and client reports. In WPCentrify, uptime sits in the same fleet dashboard as all of that, ranked by what needs attention.
That last point is why we built uptime into WPCentrify rather than leaving it to a separate tool. If you run several WordPress sites, uptime is one part of WordPress site monitoring, and one part of a WordPress website management platform that keeps every site's updates, backups, security and reports in the same place.
Sources
- UptimeRobot pricing and locations help article
- Better Stack pricing and locations and regions
- StatusCake pricing, locations and FAQ
- Site24x7 pricing and website monitoring
- Pingdom pricing and uptime monitoring
- Uptime.com pricing
- Uptime Kuma on GitHub
- Jetpack Monitor support
- Freshping deprecation FAQ
All sources checked on 10 October 2026.
Questions about uptime monitoring software
It is a service that requests your website from outside on a schedule, checks that it answers correctly and quickly, and alerts you when it does not. Most tools also record response times, check SSL certificates and publish status pages.
It depends on what you run. For many WordPress sites, a platform such as WPCentrify combines uptime with updates, backups and security. For a free plan with many monitors, UptimeRobot. For teams that need phone and SMS on-call alerts, Better Stack. For a self-hosted option, Uptime Kuma.
Yes. UptimeRobot's free plan covers 50 monitors at 5-minute intervals, StatusCake's covers 10 at 5 minutes, Better Stack offers 10 monitors at 3 minutes for personal projects, Jetpack Monitor checks WordPress sites every 5 minutes, and Uptime Kuma is free if you host it yourself.
Every one to five minutes for most sites. A five-minute check can miss short outages and adds up to five minutes before you hear about a long one. Stores and sites that earn money every minute benefit from one-minute checks or faster.
Usually because the check ran from one location and a network problem between that checker and your server looked like an outage. Tools that recheck from several locations, and only alert when they agree, cut most false alarms.
No. Freshworks deprecated Freshping. According to its own FAQ, free accounts were disabled on 6 March 2026 and paid plans run only until they expire, so Freshping users need to move to another tool.
Uptime monitoring checks a website from outside, the way a visitor reaches it. Server monitoring watches the machine itself: CPU, memory, disk and processes. A site can be down while the server looks healthy, for example when DNS or a certificate fails, so uptime monitoring comes first.
Any uptime monitor works for WordPress, but WordPress fails in ways a status code misses: a white screen or database error page can still return a 200 response. Use a monitor that checks for expected content on the page, and ideally one that shows which update or change happened before the outage.
Yes. Most tools let you add many monitors, but you add and configure each one. WPCentrify checks every connected WordPress site every 60 seconds from three locations with no per-site setup, alongside updates, backups and security for the same sites.
Related reading
WordPress uptime monitoring
Every site checked every 60 seconds from three locations, with alerts only when locations on different providers agree.
See the featureHow to monitor website uptime
Intervals, locations, uptime targets and setup steps, without the product pitch.
Read the guideWordPress site monitoring
Everything to watch on a WordPress site beyond uptime, and how often.
Read the guideMore on this topic: what to do when a WordPress site is down and managing multiple WordPress sites from one dashboard.
Uptime monitoring for every WordPress site you manage
60-second checks from three locations in Malaysia, Canada and the USA, alerts only on confirmed outages, and uptime in the same dashboard as updates, backups and security.
Free during early access. No credit card required.