Most small business owners find out their website is down when a customer tells them. By then it may have been broken for days: a payment card on the hosting plan expired, the domain didn't auto-renew, a plugin update crashed the site, or the host moved servers.
The fix takes five minutes and costs nothing: an uptime monitor.
What an uptime monitor does
It loads your homepage every few minutes from outside your server. If the page stops answering, or returns an error, it emails (or texts) you. When the site comes back, it tells you that too.
How to set one up
- Pick a free uptime service (UptimeRobot, Better Stack and Freshping all have free plans).
- Add an HTTP(S) monitor for your homepage, for example
https://yourbusiness.com. - Set the check interval to 5 minutes.
- Send alerts to an email you actually read, plus a second person if you can.
- Optional: add a keyword check for a word that only appears when the page loads properly (your business name). This catches the "page loads but shows an error" case.
Two more things to check while you're there
- Domain auto-renew: log in to your domain registrar, turn on auto-renew, and make sure the card on file is current. An expired domain takes your email down too.
- SSL certificate expiry: most monitors can warn you a couple of weeks before your HTTPS certificate expires.
What to do when the alert fires
Open the site on your phone using mobile data (not your office Wi-Fi). If it's really down, check your hosting dashboard and your email for billing notices first, since unpaid invoices are the most common cause. Then contact your host or developer with the time the alert started.
Five minutes of setup means you hear about problems before your customers do.
NEXCOD builds and looks after fast websites for small businesses: https://nexcod.vercel.app · WhatsApp +1 289 902 5119
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