Comparison
An alternative to cloud monitoring
A cloud monitoring service answers one question: is the site responding. Vekord is a dashboard for the small web agency that looks after other people's websites — it answers the same question, and along the way it knows whose site it is, when the domain expires, how much the client owes and what they last reported. If all you need is an outage alert, a cloud service is cheaper and simpler. We will say that plainly.
| What is checked | A typical cloud service | Vekord |
|---|---|---|
| Uptime | Yes, from many locations worldwide | Yes, every 60 s, from the service's server in the EU |
| SSL certificate | Usually yes | Yes, with the days left on the client card |
| Domain expiry | Rarely | Yes, straight from the registry |
| WordPress updates | No | Yes, through the agent plugin on the client site |
| JavaScript errors in visitors' browsers | No | Yes, a sensor on the client site |
| Linked to the client and the invoice | No — monitoring does not know whose site it is | Yes, the same company record as billing and client requests |
| Status page for the client | Sometimes, on higher plans | Yes, on its own link, 90 days of history |
| Price at thirty sites | Grows with the number of checks and locations | It does not grow with the number of checks — the plan counts sites |
| Where the data is | With the provider | In the European Union, backed up every day |
What the dashboard does not do better
Checks come from one place — the service's server in the EU. A cloud service knocks on the site from several countries and so can tell a site outage from a network outage along the way. If you look after clients for whom that distinction matters, keep the cloud service alongside. The dashboard does not have to be your only tool to save you from copying data around.
What a cloud service will not do
It will not tell you that the client with the expiring domain is two invoices behind and has a request open from last week. Cloud monitoring knows addresses, not clients. The whole difference is that here the site check and the money of the same client are one record.
See it on your own site
The free check runs exactly the same code the dashboard uses to watch client sites.
Check your site