Why use AlertFox for Website Monitoring?

Features Comparison: Us Vs. Them	AlertFox AlertFox Our low-cost, cloud-based website monitoring uses real web browsers. No charge for extra service. No sales calls. Great Support.	Browser Services Browser Services Uses a web browser (or simulated browser) to check performance and functionality (ex. Keynote, Webmetrics, Gomez, AlertSite).	Protocol Services Protocol Services Makes simple HTTP requests to detect basic errors (ex: Pingdom). This is what we call classic monitoring. It is included for free in all our plans.	Internal Monitoring Internal Monitoring Checks performance of CPU, RAM, disk etc of your webserver (ex. Nagios, SolarWinds).
Uses Real Browsers		Varies
Supports all major browser engines
Full Ajax Support		Varies
Flash/Video Support		Varies
Detects Ad Vendor Issues
Detects "Widget" Failures
Email Alerting
Screenshots of Errors		Extra
Full Data Retention	3 Months	Extra		Varies
Free Service Option
Starting Price	$49/month	$300+/month	$10/month	Open source
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Why Real Browsers Are Better Than Simple Pinging

AlertFox's monitoring service uses real web browsers to simulate a user interacting with your website, despite being similarly priced to simplistic "ping" style "classic" monitoring services that only check individual URLs.

The use of real browsers allows you to check that individual objects are responding, but also to functionally verify that your website is working from end-to-end. This includes ensuring that 3rd party components such as advertisements, gadgets, analytics, and Content Delivery Networks don't adversely affect your website.

AlertFox's Advanced Scripting with iMacros

As part of AlertFox advanced real browser support, you have access to all featurs of the popular open source/commercial browser automation framework iMacros (including all image recognition features). Your AlertFox subscription includes a free iMacros license. If you already have iMacros tests written, you can easily import them in and use them for monitoring.

For more advanced behavior, you can leverage iMacros advanced features such as image recognition to interact with Flash, randomize interactions, or read data from a CSV file. No other monitoring service provides such a rich and advanced options for all major browser engines.