One of the worst things that can occur while browsing the internet is that you realize your favorite site is down, or worse that your own domain is down. Well, no maybe that’s not right there are worse things that can happen, but it still sucks when sites are down! There are websites out there that allow you to check the status of a domain, but you have to check the website manually every time. Monitey runs in the background and allows you to monitor the status of any URL automatically. It’s especially useful if you own your own website and need to be up to date on the status of your domain.

What is it and what does it do

Main Functionality

Monitey runs as a background process and monitors user-defined URLs for inactivity. It keeps a detailed log of all actions and allows you to see exactly when -and for how long- a URL remains inaccessible. You can monitor any website if you wish, but it’s actually meant to be used by site admins to keep track of a personal domain.

Pros

• Will alert you when a website or URL is unavailable
• Monitors websites at a user selected interval (every minute by default)
• Logs can be saved to view in full detail at a later time, and can also be cleared
• Supposedly a big update with lots of new features is on the way
• Lightweight (5MB of RAM) and runs silently in the background

Cons

• Only monitors one URL at a time
• It doesn’t test for a specific error code, and just offers generic error message. Essentially, it gives you no indication of what’s wrong, just that a site is down.
• Websites like DownForEveryoneOrJustMe and Pingdom tools can check when a website is down or not, without you having to install anything
• Not portable, would be even better if so

Discussion

The user interface is extremely simple and straightforward. When it starts up all you have to do is enter in the full URL of the web address you’d like to monitor and click the “start monitoring” button. The program will then examine the queried URL at a specified interval and report back with the appropriate information.

By default, Monitey will check website URLs once every minute, but you can change this interval if you want. It hardly seems necessary to have the program update information every minute.

A status log displays the relevant information for every test. When a website is okay, a green “Online” label appears along with the date and time tested. When a website or URL is unavailable, the log will display “The remote name could not be resolved” in red. Obviously this error messages clues you in that something is wrong.

If you click on the “Saved Websites” button, you can manually enter numerous URLs for the program to test. Any URLs entered in this portion of the app will be automatically saved, meaning that you won’t have to re-enter them later. Unfortunately, the application will only test one URL at a time. If you want to test another you have to navigate to the saved websites menu and double click on an entry to populate the address form, or you can just enter it manually.

If the log fills up and you want to start from scratch, there’s a button to clear it entirely. There’s also a button to save the log to a text file that way you can explore it closer. More specifically, this is perfect for when you leave the program running in the background. You can view the entire log file even after being absent for a while.

Monitey uses about 6,000KB (5.8MB) of RAM while running in the background. It’s light on resources and incredibly responsive. Even so, you still have to install the application, it would be even better if it were portable.

Conclusion and download link

Monitey is an incredibly lightweight and simple application to monitor a URL or web addresses of your choosing. You can store addresses to monitor, and watch several all at once. You can also adjust the interval at which the program tests each URL. All logs can be saved to an external test file for access later, and they also make for great evidence when fighting with a web host. The only major downside is you can only monitor one URL at a time.

This application is for anyone that wants to check on a web address continuously, so it certainly applies to site admins. It’s free and it uses a relatively small memory footprint. Check it out if you need it.

Price: Free

Version reviewed: 1.0

Supported OS: Windows

Download size: 334KB

VirusTotal malware scan results: 1/46

Is it portable? No

Monitey homepage