Are My Sites Up?

Are My Sites Up is a very simple service to help you keep an eye on your sites and warn you if they go down. It is completely free. Sign up for an account, add your sites, and you are done. You can pop back to the site anytime to get a quick look at your sites. By default, you will be notified by email if any of your sites goes down. Optionally, you get an SMS text notification to your cell phone.

How does this work?
Our site tries to load your site. When that happens we get an HTTP Status Code back. If that number is anywhere in the 200’s or 300’s, your site is cool. Otherwise, there is some kind of error resulting in your site being down for visitors, and that triggers our system for handling down sites (you get the email, the light goes red, etc.)

What if THIS site goes down?
While obviously that isn’t ideal, it’s not as bad as you might think. The front-end and the back-end of the site are totally separate. If you aren’t able to load the site, don’t worry! Your sites are still being checked in the background and you will still be notified. Not once has the backend of our service gone down.

Stuff that isn’t going to work.
If your site is behind password protection to see the site at all, like HTAccess password protection, for example, we are going to get a 401 Status Code and your site will appear down. We also can’t monitor subdirectories of sites like http://example.com/sub/. We will tell you it’s up, but if it ever goes down, the site will actually send a redirect code which we interpret as Up.

How often does it check?
We will check your site at least 25 times per day, or a bit better than once per hour. You will get one notification email when a site goes down, and one when it comes back up. The same goes for SMS.

Does it register a pageview on my site?
Not really. If you use analytics software that uses JavaScript (Like Google Analytics, Mint or Woopra) or an image on your page to do its tracking, it probably won’t notice us at all. We are using a Ruby function that is similar to cURL to get our result. If you use server-side analytics software (that actually parses server logs), then you will see us hitting your site.

How many sites can I add?
We have a hard cap at 20 sites right now. Soon there will be an inexpensive premium plan which will allow more than this, along with many other useful features.

Who built this site?
Richard Felix Jr. (Twitter) is the lead developer. Chris Coyier (Twitter) designed it. The service itself is on Twitter as well.

Visit aremysitesup.com to learn more.