 |
|
|
FREE TRIAL
 Try Us Free for 14-Days
No billing info
Nothing to install
No hassle
Be setup
within minutes!
 |
|
|
|
|
Have Questions?
Not sure what you need? Call Us for Help
1-800-360-8092 |
|
|
|
Feature Descriptions
Testing Features
|
Test Network Connectivity – As part of our testing procedure, we verify that the network connectivity to your server is open and performing. Before we test your website, we perform an advanced TCP/IP connectivity test that measures the response time of your network. We feel it is just as important to know how your network is performing as it is to know if your server itself is performing.
|
|
Test DNS – As part of our testing procedure, we verify that your DNS configuration and servers are working properly. Before we test your website, we analyze the DNS response at the perimeter of the network to verify that your DNS records are being distributed across the internet and cached on local DNS servers effectively. This system of DNS distribution must be functioning properly for people to access your website using your domain name (ex. http://www.mysite.com).
|
|
Test Ping Response – As part of our testing procedure, we send out a Ping to your server to measure its responsiveness on the network. We then save this ping data and make it available to you in performance reports. These performance reports allow you to see trends and patterns of network performance over time.
|
|
Test TCP and Port Response – As part of our testing procedure, we verify that the TCP-layer of your network is operational. We do this by making a TCP connection to an open port on your server and verifying that the TCP handshake is successful.
|
|
Test HTTP QueryString Inputs – If the URL you provide for testing includes querystring variables, we will submit those querystring variables to your web server during the test procedure and validate that your web server accepts them and processes them without error.
|
|
Test SSL Security – If your web site is running SSL security, we will validate your SSL certificate and attempt to establish an encrypted connection with your server. Our test simulates real-user interactions with your server to detect any possible problems with the SSL certificate and connection. If any problems are detected, the test is deemed to have failed with an SSL class error code.
|
|
Multiple Browser Simulation – Our system allows you to specify the exact browser user-agent that you want us to simulate when performing the tests against your server. The browser's user-agent string allows you to uniquely identify which web browser (for example: Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla FireFox, Opera, Apple Safari) and which version of the web browser (i.e. v8.0, v2.1, etc.) you want to simulate. You can then configure multiple Test Profiles to perform the same test against your website using a collection of different web browsers.
|
|
Follow Browser Redirects – Page redirects are built into many websites to direct users to different parts of the website based on specific conditions defined in the website programming. Since we cannot be sure if a redirect was intentional or not, we allow you to specify whether you want us to interpret a page redirect as a failure, or as an acceptable response. If you define it as an acceptable response, our test procedure will follow the redirect to the next page and do a full test on that subsequent page. We recommend that you configure the test not to follow redirects unless the page you're testing is supposed to send a redirect command.
|
|
Monitor Multiple Page/Port Variations for Free – Each qualifying monitor you purchase allows you to configure multiple different test variations (referred to as Test Profiles) against your website or server at no additional charge. You can use this feature to test your pages (one or more) in multiple ways. For example, you can test both SSL & non-SSL, multiple domain names, multiple form input variations, multiple file names & paths, multiple server ports, and more... all with a single monitor. Your monitor will cycle through each of your Test Profiles in a round robin fashion as it monitors your website or server. For best alerting results, only use Test Profiles to test items that have a great deal of commonality. If you want to test completely different items that rely on different backend resources (like different databases and source code), you should always use a new Monitor.
|
|
Real User Simulation – As part of our testing procedure we simulate all the interactions that a real user would have with your website. This includes adhering to all the HTTP and HTML standards that normal web browsers use. In doing so, your web server cannot tell the difference between AlertBot and a real user. This level of testing allows us to accurately measure performance and detect any and all failures that your users could be experiencing.
|
|
Cookie Support – AlertBot will accept all cookies that your website sends to it during the testing process and resends those cookies back to your server during each subsequent page request. This allows us to accurately simulate the real user experience and detect any possible errors that might arise. It also ensures full compliance with the HTTP protocol.
|
|
Download Page Content – As part of our testing procedure, we download the HTML content of your page and verify that the transmission of that content is error free. During that transmission process, we also measure your network's transfer rate. If the entire content of your page is not downloaded within a 30-second time limit, the test is deemed to have failed.
|
|
Verify Content On Page – As part of our testing procedure, we will physically verify that a specific piece of text (that you predefine) is contained on your web page. This is an extremely important feature, which we recommend all customers use because it ensures the content you expect to be on the page is in fact there. It is common for web sites (a.k.a. web applications) to fail and not give any signs of the failure except that the expected content is missing. This issue has a great deal to do with how the website is programmed to handle failures. For this reason, we highly recommend that our customer use this feature to verify the content on the page.
|
|
Test HTTP Post Data Inputs – As part of our testing procedure, we will transmit form field information to the web server via the HTTP protocol standards for Post Data transfer. This Post Data represents the data inputted into form fields on the page. You can choose if you want the monitor to test these form fields or not and configure the form field data it should use.
|
|
Test Website Logins – We can test password-protected pages by logging into your website first, before testing your pages. This feature is crucial for member/subscription-based websites. We support both HTML-based login forms embedded in the web page as well as the Basic Authentication method built into the HTTP protocol.
|
|
Test Shopping Carts – We support the ability for you to test the functionality of a shopping cart on your e-commerce website. We can test things like Add-to-Cart buttons, View-Cart buttons, Checkout buttons, new customer registration forms, and many other parts of an ecommerce website. Since configuring these tests can often be complicated, we will work with you to configure these tests... or we can just completely set them up for you.
|
|
Test Member's Area Login – We support the ability for you to test the functionality of a members-only area of your website. This includes testing the new user registration process as well as testing the existing user login process and the various pages in the member's area. Since configuring these tests can often be complicated, we work with you to configure these tests...or we can just completely set them up for you.
|
Error Diagnostic Features
|
Screenshots of Page Errors – This feature gives you the ability to view webpage errors exactly as users would see them if they visited your site during a website failure. Every time a failure is detected with your website, we immediately take a screenshot of the HTML page that is displaying the error and store it for you. You can then login to our reporting section at any time and view these screen shots. These screenshots become particularly invaluable when troubleshooting intermittent and illusive website failures.
|
|
Uniquely Identifies Errors – AlertBot is designed to be as specific as possible when diagnosing problems with your website or server. Our system is able to identify many unique Error Signatures and report them to you by name. This helps you diagnose problems quickly and more efficiently when you receive a failure alert.
|
|
On Error Diagnostics – When we detect a problem with your website, we immediately take appropriate measures to validate and diagnose the error. The first thing we do is immediately retest your website from a different geographic location to validate that there is an actual problem with your website and not just a false alarm. We then perform an advanced TCP/IP test that helps identify problems with routers, network equipment, and NIC cards connected to your server. We continue our diagnostics by validating the response of the web applications running on your server. We then attempt to capture and uniquely identify the errors your web server is throwing. These are just a few of the many diagnostics we perform to troubleshoot your website problems.
|
|
Advanced False Alert Protection – One of the most important features of our system is its advanced false alert protection. No one likes to be alerted and have it turn out to be a false alarm (particularly in the middle of the night). AlertBot goes to the furthest extent possible to protect against false alerts. One of the key processes we use to protect against false alerts is that we verify every failure from multiple independent test stations located in completely different geographic areas. We then compare the results from these locations and only classify the initial error as a real failure event if the test failed from multiple locations. This ensures you're not bothered with an alert unless it's truly a problem with your network.
|
|
Number of Geographic Locations – We have a global network of Test Stations that we use to test your website and servers from around the around the world. This allows us to simulate the experience that a normal user would have on your website from these locations and detect regional outage and failures that affect your customers. View a list of all our Test Stations.
|
Contacts & Alerting Features
|
Contact Escalation at Error Stages – Contact escalation lets you configure the time each contact should be alerted during the course of a web site or server failure. For example, you can have a technician contacted immediately. If the web site remains down after 10 more minutes, you can have two more technicians contacted. You can then have an upper level administrator contacted if the error still persists after 20 minutes and so on. These escalation times can be customized to any quantity of levels, times and contacts you see fit.
|
|
Cell Phone / SMS Alerts – You can setup any number of cell phone or mobile devices for text message based alerts. Whenever your website or server fails, we will send you a text alert that will show up on your phone as a standard text message. This text message will include information about what website or server is failing and the name of the error it's throwing. It will also include information like total downtime and the date/time of the last test. You can receive an unlimited number of Cell Phone Alerts from us for free. Please note, however, that your cell phone provider may charge you for text messaging.
|
|
Email Alerts – You can setup any number of email addresses for alerts. Whenever your website or server fails, we will send you an email alerting you of the failure. This text message will include information about what website or server is failing and the name of the error it's throwing. It will also include information like total downtime and the data/time of the last test.
|
|
Number of Alert Notifications – Unlike some other monitoring companies that charge you for sending cell phone alerts, we don't. We give you the freedom of receiving an unlimited number of alerts at no charge. Please note, however, that while we don't charge for text messages sent to your cell phone, your cell phone service provider may charge you for text message services.
|
|
Maintenance Window Scheduling – We allow you to schedule recurring maintenance windows where your monitoring is temporarily disabled so you’re not alerted of expected downtime. This is most commonly used when you have maintenance being performed on your server on a recurring basis and you expect your servers/websites to be down during that time.
|
|
Phone Call Alerts – If email and SMS alerts are not enough, we also offer direct phone call alerts where our automated system will call you and speak the alert information to you out loud. If our system is not able to reach you on the first call, it will re-attempt the call multiple times.
|
Data Collection & Reporting Features
|
Performance Data Tracking – Our monitoring service not only verifies that your website is functioning without error, but it also takes performance measurements during its test procedure. Performance measurements include connection time, response time, download time, and transfer rate. This data is stored and made available for your analysis in our Reports section. These reports are extremely useful in identifying potential bottlenecks and performance problems.
|
|
Multiple Performance Reports – During each test performance on your website, we collect and store a collection of performance data about your website. We then take this performance data and make it available in easy to read performance reports. These reports include ping response time charts, test step breakdown charts, HTTP response time charts, TCP response time charts, transfer rate charts and more. You can run these reports over hours, days, weeks or months, and see the overall performance trends and patterns. These performance charts become invaluable in determining bottlenecks in your network and web capacity during peak hours and network backup windows.
|
|
Interactive Reports – Reports are delivered through an interactive charting interface that allows you to customize reports. You simply choose the data that you want to look at, and the type of chart you want to display it on, and you're on your way. You can choose from 20 different types of charts-- like Bar, Line, Area, Pie, Scatter, Radar, Surface and Contour-- to display your data. In addition, there are many more features that you can customize through the intuitive menus and toolbars. You can even export charts and data to formats like Binary, Metafile and Bitmap, and delimited Text files. Our reporting system puts the power in your hands, rather than limiting you to pre-defined reports.
|
|
Local Time Zone Reporting – When you add users and contacts to your account, we allow you to specify what time zone they are in. This information allows us to convert dates and times displayed in reports and alerts to your relevant time zone. This way you never have to worry about manually converting dates and times in our system to your local time.
|
|
Detailed Test Log – We provide a test log, which lists the information about every test performed on your website/server. This test data includes the date/time of the test, the geographic location where it was performed, the status of each test step and the individual performance data taken for each test step. The test log can be filtered by monitor, test profile, geographic location, test errors, and more. The test log is a great tool for analyzing the raw test data.
|
|
Detailed Failure Event Reports – We provide a detailed Failure Event Report for each confirmed failure that occurs with your website/server. The Failure Event Report allows you to see all the details regarding a failure in one place. The Failure Event Report includes the start and end date/times of the failure, a list of all the tests performed during the failure event, a list of the geographic locations where the failures were detected, and a list all the unique errors identified during the failure event. These Failure Event Reports are listed in the Failure Log. The Failure Log allows you to filter the list of Failure Reports by monitor and date/time so that you can quickly find the report you're looking for. Among other things, Failure Event Reports can be used during management meetings and event debriefings.
|
|
Error Recurrence Reports – We provide a report which allows you to clearly see which errors are most common on your website/server. This report breaks down all errors that have occurred on your website/server into a doughnut chart with percentages assigned to each slice. This report is invaluable in determining the best place to spend development resources to reduce downtime. Starting with the most frequent offending error and working your way down to the least frequent offending error will produce the fastest reduction in downtime.
|
|
Real-time Monitoring Status – We provide a real-time monitoring status page which lists every monitor in your account and lets you know if it's up or down, when it was last tested, the performance results of that last test, and what date/time the next test is going to be performed. This real-time status page allows you to get a quick view of your entire network all on one screen.
|
|
Network Operations View – We provide an optional Network Operations View screen which can be used to display the status of your entire network on an overhead flat panel display in your network operation center. This display is typically mounted on a wall in the network operations center where all personnel can see it. This allows them to look up at a moment's notice to view the status of the entire network. This Network Operations View is designed with a black background to reduce burn in and can be displayed in full screen mode. Each website/ server monitor in the network is represented by a colored box where the color of the box represents its current state (UP or DOWN) and the contents of each box contain information about this state. If you would like to add this feature to your account, please contact one of our sales representatives.
|
Management Features
|
Multiple Users per Account – As with most companies, there may be multiple people in your company that need to interact with our system. We make this easy by allowing you to add multiple users to your account. Each user will have a different username and password and each user can have different assigned permissions.
|
|
Customizable User Permissions – You can assign a unique set of permissions to each user you add to your account. You can give each user a different set of permissions to view/add/edit/delete monitors, reports, test kit tools, account information, and users. This becomes useful when you need to give certain employees limited access to the system. For example, you might want to give some employees the ability to view reports but nothing else; while other employees should be able to add/edit monitors but not delete them.
|
|
WEBSITE & SERVER MONITORING
