Terms to Know Before Purchasing a Website Monitoring Service

Online businesses can generate maximum revenues only if their site is continuously available to the customers without any disruptions. For this reason, site owners goal is to keep their websites live and fully functional without interruption. That means they need to adopt some tool or methodology to monitor downtime instances, uptime and the site response to provide better user experience. By monitoring the sites with an appropriate tool they can reduce the risk of website failures and downtimes which cause revenue losses. The basic tool required to protect business websites from such issues is to purchase a quality website monitoring service.

When searching for monitoring services for website applications, site owners may come across many monitoring methodologies such as internal & external monitoring.

Internal Monitoring

When the performance of site is measured from within the firewall or internal server then it is known as internal monitoring. Organizations use this traditional method to check internally their server performance and analyze the issues that could disrupt their site functionality. The software checks for various aspects related to website application and provides updates on upcoming issues. Though it adds benefit to businesses by tracking their websites, many of them do not prefer to use this method because the software loses its monitoring ability when the internal server goes down. The site will not be monitored for possible issues until the server problem is identified and resolved. This approach is impractical for online businesses because it is risky for them to leave websites without monitoring during internal server outages.

External Monitoring

When the service is done outside the firewall by third party providers then it is called external monitoring. This type of service is more safer for websites because it is not connected to the internal servers of service seekers. The provider will continue monitoring websites even if there is an issue with server within the firewall. However, while selecting the provider it is important to choose the service that has multiple servers with different server locations. Choosing the site monitoring service that relies on just one server will not provide continuous protection to the websites. When a website monitoring service has multiple servers, if there is a problem at one server location, the site will continue to be monitored from other server locations. If there an outage or performance issue, the external monitor will notify right away so that the site owners can immediately start resolving the issue and reduce their downtime duration.

While the above are the basic methodologies in implementation, the following are two primary types of solutions in site monitoring service.

Synthetic Monitoring

Synthetic or active website monitoring do not rely on virtual web traffic. The testing scripts are executed to replicate the actions of an actual end user behavior and site will be tested for multiple conditions. By running these test conditions at regular intervals, the service will detect the downtime or performance issues related to websites. Since the service doesn't require virtual web traffic, it is helpful in testing applications for scenarios before they experience such situations. This type of monitoring allows to record and assess different website metrics such as site uptime & response time, hosting needs, and other critical network or server issues that influences the site performance.

Passive Monitoring

The passive approach is a real user monitoring where different website metrics are monitored during actual end user interactions. Passive monitoring offers crucial performance monitoring of data while the website is active for end user activity. The main purpose of passive monitoring is to keep track of site behavior when end user interacts with the website. This monitoring can identify any deterioration in website activity in real life situation. Intimating about such situations will enable a business to direct resources to resolve that matter.

Choosing Between Active & Passive Monitoring

Even though both offer the benefits of monitoring website data, they differ in execution technique and the results obtained. While one method has the ability to emulate the possible error scenarios, other approach keeps a watch on the website behavior during actual user interactions. While choosing between these two, site owners can select the right monitoring service that best suits their website needs. If it is a profit driven website and if reliability and consistency are crucial aspects for generating leads, sales & revenues, then the site must have a comprehensive website monitoring service which can ensure the benefits of both active & passive monitoring.