Free Monitoring for Small Biz: Stay Online Cheap

Downtime loses sales. Free tools work.

Costs

Revenue calc: Hourly * hours down = loss. Example: $500/hr * 2 = $1000.

Hidden: Trust loss (60% don't return), SEO hits, productivity drop, reputation damage.

Best Free

exit1.dev: Unlimited, simple.

1. exit1.dev

• Free forever
• Unlimited sites
• 1-min checks
• Quick setup
• SSL, webhooks, API

For: Pro without cost.

2. UptimeRobot

• 50 sites
• 5-min checks
• SSL
• Headers
• API (limited)

For: Multi-sites.

3. Pingdom

• Perf metrics
• Speed monitoring
• Alerts
• Transactions
• 1-min (paid)

For: E-comm UX.

Setup

Points: Homepage, checkout, contact, SSL, third-party.

exit1.dev:

1. Visit https://exit1.dev
2. Start free
3. Add URL
4. Frequency 1 min
5. Webhooks for Slack/email
6. Test

Business hours:

const schedule = {
  "business": {
    "frequency": "1 minute",
    "hours": "9:00-17:00",
    "timezone": "America/New_York"
  },
  "after": {
    "frequency": "5 minutes",
    "hours": "17:00-9:00",
    "timezone": "America/New_York"
  }
};

Scenarios

E-comm

Monitor: Home, products, cart, payment, confirmation.

Peak hours, processor alerts, load times.

Service Biz

Monitor: Services, contact, booking, portal, blog.

Business hours focus.

Pro Services

Monitor: Site, portal, sharing, calendar, billing.

Budget Impact

Free saves $100s/mo vs paid.

Checklist

Week 1: Tool, main site, email alerts, test, doc.

Week 2: Add pages, SSL, webhooks, procedures, train.

Week 3: Adjust, hours monitoring, dashboards, escalation, scale plan.

Practices

1. Simple start, smart scale

• Critical first
• Add gradually
• Customer-facing priority

2. Realistic

• Free limits
• False positives ok
• Backup for critical

3. Response Procedures

# Response Checklist
1. Verify real (manual check)
2. Assess scope
3. Notify team
4. Check host status
5. Temp solutions
6. Communicate customers
7. Doc incident

4. Monitor Business Drivers

• Revenue pages
• Touchpoints
• Dependencies
• Security (SSL)

Stories

Restaurant: 3 locations, ordering monitored, 99.9% uptime, $0.

Startup: Budget tight, checkout monitored, caught issues, saved $2000.

Firm: Portal monitored, better satisfaction, fewer tickets.

Conclusion

Free works. Start now.

Monitor free

Remember: The best monitoring system is the one you actually use. Start with exit1.dev's simple setup and build your monitoring strategy as your business grows.

Sources

• AWS Well-Architected: Reliability Pillar — https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/reliability-pillar/welcome.html
• Google SRE Book: Monitoring Distributed Systems — https://sre.google/sre-book/monitoring-distributed-systems/

Recommended Free Monitoring Resources

• Free Uptime Monitor Checklist – Step-by-step actions to configure a free uptime monitor that catches incidents fast.
• Best Free Uptime Monitoring Tools (2025) – Compare the strongest free uptime monitor platforms and when to upgrade.
• Free Website Monitoring Tools 2025 Guide – Evaluate which free website monitor fits your stack and alerting needs.
• Free Website Monitoring for Developers – See how engineering teams automate alerts, SLO tracking, and reporting with a free website monitor.