https://sitecanary.com/
Hi everyone,
We've been working on SiteCanary for the last couple months. SiteCanary alerts you when your site goes down via email, SMS or instant message. It lets you configure various tests - "asserts" - to make sure lots of things are looking good (http status, mime type, IP, dns server, etc), and you can configure things in the request like cookies and user agent.
We realize the idea isn't very innovative, but we're working on related products that will be targeted at the audience (small-business website owner), and wanted to solve a simple problem first.
Create a demo account so you can play with it for free at: https://sitecanary.com/demoaccount
(currently hidden... but you guys are friends)
Let us know what you think!
A few bits of feedback: - When I was adding a new site to check, it wasn't immediately clear whether you support sending text messages to non-US mobiles. The only example provided is formatted US-style (1-xxx-xxx-xxxx). I put in my NZ mobile as 6421xxxxxxx and it did in fact work. I'd suggest adding a second example number formatted as e.g. +44xxxxxxxxx and perhaps a link to a page listing the countries you support. - Perhaps an option to send a second text message when the site comes back up? - The subject line of the email which is sent when the site comes back up is simply 'SiteCanary: accountname:'. It'd be good to have this be 'SiteCanary: sitename is back!' instead.