Today we take a look at why SMS alerts are the perfect way to stay ahead when you’re trying to monitor your websites and keep them all online.
Running a website, several websites, an email server, a web server… in fact ANY web-based service comes with a risk. The risk of it stopping working, or suffering from “downtime” as the system admins like to call it. Well, not “like” – no system admin likes to talk about downtime! You cannot completely guarantee that any server or website will run with 100% uptime and absolutely no downtime.
What you CAN do is keep a very close eye on everything and be alerted within seconds of something going wrong. Downtime can be an e-commerce company’s worst nightmare, a charity’s biggest headache, or a football club’s most embarrassing moment. Whatever type of website or web service you run, downtime is a no-no, and monitoring is essential. Keeping tabs on everything means that you will know as soon as something goes down, crashes or fails, so that you (or someone else on the alerts list) can act quickly to bring everything back up.
Email alerts are great, but they might not be the most reliable method of receiving alerts, and for people who need to receive alerts instantly, anywhere, anytime, emails might not always come through to a mobile device or tablet if reception is poor. SMS alerts, on the other hand, are far more reliable and don’t rely on a 3G, 4G, 5G or wifi network as they are carried via a more basic, widely available 2G GSM network. This means that the mobile data connection of a mobile phone or tablet can be switched off and most devices can still receive SMS alerts. SMS stands for Short Message Service, and SMS messages are often referred to as “text messages”, or just “texts”.
Server Check sends SMS alerts to as many contacts as you set up in the software, notifying you when a monitor encounters an error, or when there’s a problem with the mains power. Each SMS alert uses up one Server Check SMS Credit regardless of where it is sent to, and all licenses (even the FREE 10-monitor license!) include some SMS credits when registered. SMS messages can be sent to most locations and countries, and an SMS test facility is available within the software to check that it is working correctly where you are.
SMS credits can be purchased whenever you like and are shown in your Server Check account and in the software itself. You can use your SMS credits from one Server Check account for multiple installations of Server Check, so no need to set up separate Server Check accounts if you run the software on several machines.
You can find prices and more information about Server Check SMS Credits here.