Tag: sms

SMS Alerts when your website goes down

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.

Server Monitoring? What’s in it for me?

One of the most frequently asked questions amongst IT admins is: “How should I monitor my sites and servers, and what should I use?”

One of the advantages of using Server Check for monitoring websites and servers is that it does what it says on the tin. It checks your servers and websites, and other web-based services like FTP, SMTP, MySQL, etc., without being overly complex.

There’s no coding required to get Server Check up and running, and no complicated monitoring parameters to insert into the monitor check. It’s a bit like a “plug-n-play” monitoring system: 1. Add your website or hostname, 2. Give it a name and decide how frequently you want it to be checked, 3. Let Server Check get on with the monitoring.

We make reducing the amount of time your servers and websites are down a breeze. Server Check will send email and SMS alerts as soon as it detects a problem with any of your monitors, and it will then keep checking them until they are restored or become available again.

So what’s in it for you? Well, instant alerts so that you know something’s wrong. Would you rather find out there’s a problem from Server Check or from an angry client or customer? And a quick setup means that you could be up and running with Server Check in about five minutes, and all for free.

What else is in it for you? Total reliance on yourself, and no one else. Server Check monitors sites and servers from your own systems, and you can easily run it from multiple locations including remote data centres. This means you’re not relying on a third party to monitor your valuable assets – you can do it all in-house.

Get Server Check FREE 10-monitor version

Give the FREE 10-monitor version of Server Check a try today, and let it do the monitoring so that you can get on with all the other important stuff!

Server Check v1.0.20200621

Server Check version 1.0.20200621 has just been released and is available to download immediately.

This version adds a couple of simple but very handy features:

  • Optional email and SMS messages when an update for Server Check is available: if Server Check is running on a “headless” system or sits in the middle of a datacentre with no physical access, system admins can now receive alerts to let them know an update is available. The system will only send the alerts once per software release.
  • Power alerts are now sent when mains power fails: previously, Server Check would send a power alert only if running on a critically low battery. This behaviour has been changed so that Server Check will now send a power alert (optional emails and/or SMS messages) when mains power fails and a battery takes over providing power.

This release also includes a major performance improvement to the monthly uptime stats page, and a “Page Loading…” screen has also been added for extra reassurance that Server Check is crunching the numbers and generating the page.

All web pages that Server Check includes are generated on-demand, so no statistics are ever cached or out of date. This means you’ll always know the very latest stats and status when you use Server Check!

We hope you enjoy this latest release – give it a download here.

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