DemandZEN’s Marketing Tool of the Month: Pingdom

Marketing is like fashion, there’s always a trendy “new thing” you have to try on for size and it may or may not look right on your business. Digital marketing is exceptionally tough– new tools are introduced daily.

That’s why, every month, we’ll highlight one tool that solves a different business problem. That way, you can learn about great new tools that could be a great fit for your business without the stress. In this, our inaugural post, we’ll be focused on Pingdom.

Pingdom

Pingdom is a SaaS service that provides uptime and performance monitoring services for websites and web applications. Founded in Sweden in 2007, Pingdom is now used by clients such as Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, and MailChimp.

What Pingdom does

Pingdom uses over 60 probe servers across the United States and Europe to monitor website uptime, performance, and user interaction. You can set customizable alerts to trigger when your site or application is down or experiencing low performance, sent via email, SMS, or within the app itself.

The alerts can also be customized based on when things break, error messages, HTTP status, content/site changes, and more. Additionally, you don’t just get alerts when things aren’t running smoothly. You’ll also receive alerts when your website or application becomes available again.

Pingdom prides itself on eliminating “false alerts” through using an instantaneous, multiple-step verification process before alerting you the site or application is down, which allows for developers to more accurately track the root causes of why it may have crashed.

Uptime monitoring

Your website and web apps are everything to your business. Every year the backend gets more complex to meet client needs, business objectives, and federal requirements. At some point, something will break and you need to know the moment it does…before your prospects and clients. Downtime can result in fewer sales and angry customers. Not to mention, it can also affect any campaigns you may have running that have links to the site or application. The butterfly effect can be astronomical.

Pingdom knows you need to be up all the time. Subsequently, when you have Pingdom on your site or app, it automatically checks that the server is available every minute by testing it from locations all over the world and double checking those results.

Pingdom also enables you to find the root cause of the outage directly within the Pingdom dashboard. As soon as an issue or outage is detected, they automatically begin troubleshooting the issue so you can check server response codes and web server output.

Real user experience monitoring

Pingdom knows that simply knowing when you’re “available” isn’t enough. Pingdom also tracks trends in page load time and page load visits as they happen. You’ll also get information on where the visitor came from, the browser they’re using, and how long your page took to load.

Touting themselves as a “global” platform, you can view all of these trends not only in specific time periods and web browsers but also from a specific country. The ability to drill down into such specific aspects or user experience, you can gain deep insights into your performance in real time.

Page Speed

Page speed is extremely important for good user experience. If a site doesn’t load quickly or efficiently, a prospect or user may be likely to abandon the site for a competitor with fewer site issues– even if they have an inferior product/service. However, page loading speed isn’t just about user experience. Google has made page loading speed a key aspect of their algorithm for SEO rankings. These days, making sure your site loads quickly and efficiently is key to getting your site found. 

Bonus: Running a test on your page speed is totally free on Pingdom.

Pricing

Pingdom’s pricing runs the gamut from personal use all the way to enterprise. Subscriptions start at $39.95/month for a small business website (with discounts available for an annual subscription). It’s an affordable option for everyone looking to improve and control their web presence.

But, if you’re not sure this is what you’re looking for, there’s no need to commit yet. Pingdom offers a two-week free trial so you can get a feel for the platform.