We keep watch on your site, day and night.
Website monitoring means software visits your site regularly, day and night, and checks it loads, shows the right page, and that its padlock and domain aren't about to expire. When something looks wrong, a person reads the alert, checks it, fixes it, and tells you what happened, with real dates and times.
In one sentence: monitoring is a smoke alarm for your website: software keeps watch on it day and night from the outside, the way a customer reaches it, and a person reads the alerts and decides what to do, so problems are caught early instead of weeks later.
What can go wrong without anyone noticing?
Owners usually find out their site was broken from a customer, days later. That's because nobody visits their own website at 2am on a Saturday. Here are three real-world ways a site fails quietly:
- It goes down on Friday night. The hosting company has a fault, or a setting is changed by mistake. The site shows an error all weekend, exactly when people browse and book. On Monday it's back, and you never knew it was gone.
- It's "online" but broken. The server still answers, so a simple check says everything is fine. But the page is blank, shows a database error, or the booking calendar never appears. This is the most common failure we find, and the easiest to miss.
- The padlock or the domain expires. When a security certificate lapses, browsers show visitors a full-page warning that the site isn't safe, and most turn back. When a domain lapses, the website and often the email stop working. Since 15 March 2026, new certificates can last at most 200 days, falling to 100 days in March 2027 and 47 days in March 2029 (CA/Browser Forum, 2025). Renewals will keep getting more frequent, so automatic renewal needs someone watching it.
What do we check?
| What we check | How we check | What you see |
|---|---|---|
| Your site is online and answering | Regular automatic checks, day and night | Whether your site was online this week |
| Key pages show what they should: home, contact, booking | Part of the same regular checks | Any page that went blank or showed an error |
| The padlock certificate is valid and renewing | Watched automatically | Days until the next renewal |
| Your domain renewal date and settings | Watched automatically | Renewal date, and any setting changed |
| Page speed, measured as a phone would load it | Measured regularly | Seconds to load, not a score |
| Alerts read and acted on by a person | Whenever one fires | What happened, when, and what we did |
| Outage log: start, end, cause, what we changed | Kept as it happens | A short history on your monthly page |
What's the difference between "online" and "working"?
A basic uptime check asks one question: did the server reply? That's useful, but a server can reply with a blank page, an error message, or a page that's been taken over by a hacker. So for your most important pages we also check that the right words appear on them, like your business name or the heading of your booking page. If they're missing, we treat it as a problem, even though the site is technically "up".
And because a working page can still hide a broken form, we also send real test enquiries through your forms regularly. Monitoring and form testing work together: one keeps watch, the other checks the whole journey works.
If Google ever shows visitors a red "Deceptive site ahead" screen instead of your site, see how to clear "Deceptive site ahead".
Heading into a big sale? Our Black Friday website checklist covers what to check beforehand and what to do if your site goes down mid-sale.
Software watches. A person decides.
An alert on its own fixes nothing. Here's what happens between "something's wrong" and the line in your note.
The check fails
A page doesn't load, loads blank, or is missing the words it should show. The alarm is raised automatically.
AutomaticIt's confirmed
We check again before calling it a problem, so a two-second hiccup doesn't become a false alarm.
Checked twiceA person acts
Someone looks at what's wrong and fixes it: restarting a service, rolling back a bad update, or chasing your hosting company. A person reads the alert, not just software.
As fast as we canYou're told
If customers were affected, we let you know by email or WhatsApp. Either way, your note shows what happened, how long it lasted, and what we changed.
Then in your noteMonday, 8:00
Hi Priya, one hiccup on Saturday night. All fixed.
- Your site was down for 38 minutes on Saturday, from 11:12pm. Your hosting company had a fault. We confirmed it was back and tested your booking page
- Online the rest of the week
- Booking page showed your calendar at every check
- Padlock renews itself in 41 days. Domain renews 3 March
Real times, real causes, no tech talk.
Most weeks, monitoring takes one line: online all week. When something happens, you get the start time, how long it lasted, what caused it, and what we did. A bad week is reported just like a good one.
- Exact times, in your time zone
- The cause in simple words, and whose fault it was
- What we changed so it's less likely to happen again
See the weekly note and monthly page
Names and numbers changed for illustration.
Monitoring is in every plan.
There's no cheaper "unwatched" version. If we look after your site, we watch it.
Keep
$100 / month
Watched day and night, with all of Protect and your enquiries by name.
- Regular automatic checks
- Padlock and domain watch
- Alerts read by a person
Grow Recommended
$250 / month
The same watching, plus Capture: we fix the slow pages it finds.
- Everything in Keep
- Slow pages found and fixed
- Google profile watch
Full Care
$500 / month
The same watching, with all three pillars and trend lines on your monthly page.
- Everything in Grow
- Six-month speed and uptime trends
- AI answer check
What monitoring can't do.
So you know exactly what you're getting.
Other companies' systems
If your booking provider or payment company has an outage, we spot it on your site and tell you, but we can't fix their systems. We help you contact them.
Phones, office internet, social media
We watch your website, domain and padlock. Your phone lines, office internet and social media accounts are outside what we look after.
Zero downtime
Monitoring helps us catch problems early. It can't stop every outage on the internet. If your site is down right now, see what to do when your website is down.
A free alert tool, a freelancer, or us.
Free tools that ping your site are useful. The gap is what happens after the alert lands in your inbox at 2am.
| What matters | Do it yourself | A freelancer | Penguina |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regular automatic checks, day and night | With a free tool | Sometimes | Yes |
| Checks the page shows the right content, not just "online" | If you set it up | Sometimes | Key pages |
| Padlock and domain expiry watched | If you remember | Sometimes | Yes |
| Someone reads the alert and fixes the problem | You do | When they're free | Yes |
| False alarms filtered out before anyone panics | No | Depends | Yes |
| A simple history of outages and causes | No | Rarely | On your monthly page |
When a quiet outage hurts most.
Florists
Orders pile up in the days before Valentine's Day and Mother's Day. An hour offline then costs more than a quiet month. We watch closest when it matters most.
Electricians
Emergency jobs come in at night and at weekends. If your site is down when someone's power is out, they call the next name. We keep watch day and night.
Massage therapists
Clients often book late in the evening, from the sofa. We check that your booking page shows its calendar, not just that the site is up.
Questions about monitoring.
Something else? Ask in the chat, email hello@penguina.website or WhatsApp us.
Will I get an alert every time something goes wrong?
Not unless you want them. Small hiccups are handled quietly and appear in your Monday note. If customers were affected, for example the site was down for a while, we tell you by email or WhatsApp with what we're doing about it.
What happens when my site goes down?
Even the biggest websites in the world have outages now and then. When yours does, a person reads the alert, works out the cause and starts fixing it. Then your note tells you when it started, how long it lasted and what we changed.
What does "online 168 of 168 hours" mean in my note?
A week has 168 hours. It means every check we made that week found your site loading and showing the right page. If it was down for part of an hour, we say so, with the times.
Does all this checking slow my site down?
No. Each check is like one visitor opening one page, which is tiny compared with your normal traffic. It doesn't affect your visitors or your Google listing.
My hosting company already emails me when the site is down. Isn't that enough?
It's a start. But those emails usually only check that the server replies, not that your pages show the right thing. And they arrive in your inbox, often at night, leaving you to work out what to do. With us, a person reads the alert and fixes it.
What if the problem is my hosting company, not my website?
Then we chase them for you, and tell you what they said. If you host with us, the hosting is ours to fix. Either way, you hear the cause in simple words, not "server error 503".
Do you check my booking calendar too?
Our regular checks look at whether your booking page loads and shows what it should. We also go further and regularly make a real test enquiry or booking request through it, timed from send to arrival. See forms and bookings tested.
Sources for the figures on this page
Not sure where to start? Send us your website.
We look at it the way a customer would, find up to 3 real problems, and fix one of them free. No call needed.