Free Website Monitoring Services— well, mostly free…

I’ve been testing website scanning services for the past year. Sadly, most site monitoring services are either excessively expensive, or at best just malware centric web page monitoring services (that is, just page monitoring services wrapped in malware related marketing).

While there’s some value in these external web page checking service, the best monitoring services monitor your website from the inside, checking every file at least daily. TVCNet Website hosting provides daily malware scanning free with their hosting service, though if you can’t move your website there are lots of free options.

Free monitoring services:

Google Alerts
I should have a T-shirt made, because “I love Google Alerts!”
I use Google Alerts to notify me of new links or updates which appear at Google.com. You may find Google Alerts helpful for malware monitoring as well. To better explain how, I’ve created this sweet little video for you:

ChangeDetection.com | TrackEngine.com | Changedetect.com
Around for years, ChangeDetection.com, TrackEngine.com and Changedetect.com monitor for new content or changes to websites. ChangeDetection has a nice compare web pages option as well.

WatchThatPage.com
You select which pages to monitor and WatchThatPage will notify when pages have changed.

FireFox Plugin Update Scanner
I’ve been using the FireFox Plugin Update Scanner for years. You can use this plugin to notify you of web page changes as well.|

WordPress Specific Website Monitoring

WordPress File Monitor Plus
I’ve been recommending this plugin since 2010. It can be a bit annoying at first since it reports all changes made within your website. Though once you get used to how it works you’ll find File Monitor Plus indispensable for monitoring all of your blogs from the inside (for free!).

cloudsafe365
http://vimeo.com/39798556
New on the scene in 2012 and still going through it’s beta phase the cloudsafe365 plugin is worth checking out. Cloudsafe365 prevents and reports hacking, prevents content theft, and has one of the best restore functions available for WordPress today. As security and recovery plugins go this one’s a gem.

Paid Monitoring Services

As mentioned above, the best monitoring services check your website from the inside-out. External scanning services can’t see those hidden back door scripts hackers like to scatter within the websites they’ve hacked.

CodeGuard is one of those inside-out monitors.
http://vimeo.com/30080096
CodeGuard is simply the easiest to use commercial website monitoring service I’ve tested. Support is great and everything works exactly as described on their website.

My website has been hacked. Now what do I do?