Pingdom, try it ;-)

// January 4th, 2009 // Interesting Stuff

Pingdom is a service that pings online services (websites, email services, etc) and monitors their uptime and downtime. As useful as it already sounds, it gets better: Pingdom will notify you (via SMS, Email) of downtime — it even notifies you when the service has been restored. As one could expect, this service is not free. For $9.95 you get 5 checks a month with 20 SMS notifications, or for $39.95 you can get 30 checks with 200 SMS notifications. There’s a 30-day free trial for those who want to try it, here (sign-up on the left).

Now I’m no expert on Pingdom nor can I vouch for the service they promise, but it all does seem nice and handy. I’m currently testing the service out with the afforementioned free trial, I might even register for a year if it lives up to expectations.

There’s currently a special going on thanks to the new year: Pingdom will whack 70% off of your first invoice. That’s quite a lot, considering a yearly rate would normally run you $119, and you can get it for just $35.