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Frequently Asked Questions

Everything you need to know about professional website monitoring for businesses and agencies

✓ Instant Downtime Alerts ✓ Perfect for Agencies ✓ API Access Available

Understanding URLWatch Plans & Features

Need help choosing the right plan? Talk to our team

What's the difference between Free, Starter, and Pro plans?

Free Plan: 6 monitors, 6-minute checks, email alerts. Good for testing or personal projects.

Starter ($4.99/mo): 20 monitors, 60-second checks, email alerts, email support. Perfect for small businesses and freelancers monitoring their own sites plus a few client sites.

Pro ($24.99/mo): 100 monitors, 60-second checks, email alerts, priority support. Ideal for agencies managing many client websites and developers needing integration capabilities.

What is 60-second monitoring and why does it matter?

60-second monitoring means we check your website every single minute, 24/7. If your site goes down, you're notified within 60 seconds—not 5 or 10 minutes later. Here's why this matters:

Revenue Protection: E-commerce sites lose $5,600 per minute of downtime on average. Fast detection = less revenue loss.
Customer Retention: Customers who encounter downtime often never return. Quick fixes prevent customer loss.
SEO Protection: Google penalizes frequently down sites. Faster fixes protect your rankings.
Professional Image: Clients expect 99.9% uptime. Prove you deliver it with minute-by-minute monitoring.

How does 6-minute checking compare to 60-second checking?

The free plan checks every 6 minutes, which means your site could be down for up to 6 minutes before you're notified. That's acceptable for personal blogs, but for businesses:

6 minutes = potential $33,600 revenue loss (for average e-commerce)
60 seconds = only $5,600 max loss

Paid plans with 60-second checks detect issues 6x faster, minimize downtime impact, and show clients you're proactive. For businesses making money online, 60-second monitoring pays for itself instantly.

Why should I upgrade from Free to Starter plan?

Upgrade to Starter if you:
• Run a business website (even small)
• Manage 7+ websites (free only has 6 monitors)
• Need faster downtime detection (60 seconds vs 6 minutes)
• Want email support for issues
• Have clients expecting professional monitoring

At just $4.99/month, Starter costs less than a coffee but protects thousands in potential revenue. Most businesses upgrade within days of trying the free plan.

What makes the Pro plan worth $24.99/month?

Pro is designed for agencies and power users who need:

1. Scale (100 monitors): Monitor all client websites from one dashboard. At $0.25 per monitor, it's the industry's best value.

2. Full Access: Automate workflows, create custom client reports, and build monitoring into your service offerings.

3. Priority Support: Super fast response times when issues arise. Your business can't wait days.

ROI Example: If you charge clients $50/month for monitoring services and use URLWatch Pro to deliver it, you profit $25/client after just one client. With 100 monitor capacity, you can serve 50-100 clients.

Is URLWatch designed for agencies managing client websites?

Absolutely! URLWatch is perfect for agencies because:

Centralized Dashboard: Monitor all client sites in one place
Instant Alerts: Fix client issues before they even notice
Professional Service: Offer monitoring as a value-add service
Affordable Scale: Pro plan handles 100 sites for $24.99/mo
White-Label Option: Rebrand completely for $399 one-time

Many agencies charge $20-50/month per client for monitoring services while only paying $0.25/monitor with our Pro plan. That's 80-200x markup potential.

How can agencies use URLWatch to increase revenue?

Revenue Model 1 - Included Service: Include monitoring in your maintenance packages. Charge $100/month for maintenance + monitoring, use URLWatch Pro ($25/mo) to deliver monitoring for 100 clients. Profit: $75/mo.

Revenue Model 2 - Add-On Service: Charge $20-30/month per site for monitoring. Cost: $0.25/site with Pro plan. Profit: $19.75/site × 50 clients = $987.50/mo.

Revenue Model 3 - White-Label: Buy white-label ($399), rebrand as "YourAgency Monitor," sell unlimited monitoring to unlimited clients. One-time investment, infinite margin.

What is the White-Label solution and who is it for?

Our White-Label license ($399 one-time) gives you the complete URLWatch source code to run under your own brand. You get:

• Full PHP source code (all files)
• Unlimited monitors & users
• Your logo, colors, domain name
• 1 year of feature updates
• Installation support

Perfect for:
• Agencies wanting their own branded monitoring tool
• Developers building monitoring into their products
• Companies needing on-premise monitoring
• Anyone wanting to control the full stack

White-label cannot be resold as a product, but you can use it for unlimited clients in your own business.

How do email alerts work? When do I get notified?

You receive instant email alerts for two events:

1. Downtime Alert: The moment we detect your site is down (within 60 seconds on paid plans, 6 minutes on free), you get an email with:
• Site name and URL
• Time site went down
• Error details
• Link to dashboard

2. Recovery Alert: When your site comes back online, confirming the issue is resolved.

Emails arrive within seconds of detection. For agencies, you can fix client issues before clients even notice, making you look proactive and professional.

How much does website downtime actually cost businesses?

Real downtime costs by business type:

E-commerce: $5,600 per minute (Gartner study)
SaaS Companies: $8,000 per minute average
Enterprise: $9,000+ per minute
Small Business: $1,000-3,000 per minute

Even just ONE 10-minute downtime event costs a small business $10,000-30,000 in lost revenue. URLWatch Starter costs $59.88/year. That's 500x ROI if it prevents just one downtime incident. For businesses, monitoring isn't an expense—it's insurance that pays for itself.

Can I switch plans anytime? What happens when I upgrade?

Upgrading: Takes effect instantly. You immediately get access to more monitors, faster checks, and new features. You're charged the prorated difference for the current billing period.

Downgrading: Change takes effect at the end of your current billing cycle. You keep your current features until then. If you have more monitors than your new plan allows, you'll need to remove some before downgrading.

No penalties: Switch plans freely. No fees, no lock-ins. Most users upgrade within weeks as their business grows.

How accurate is your uptime monitoring?

URLWatch uses industry-standard HTTP status code checking:

UP (200-399 codes): Site is responding normally
DOWN (400+ codes or timeout): Site is unreachable or erroring

We measure actual response times in milliseconds and detect even brief outages. Our monitoring is as accurate as enterprise solutions costing 10x more. False positives are rare (less than 0.1%) because we verify responses before alerting. When we say your site is down, it's down.

What types of websites can I monitor?

Monitor any publicly accessible URL using HTTP or HTTPS:

• Business websites & landing pages
• E-commerce stores (Shopify, WooCommerce, etc.)
• SaaS applications & web apps
• REST APIs & web services
• Client websites (for agencies)
• Blogs, portfolios, membership sites
• Marketing funnels & squeeze pages

Cannot monitor: Sites requiring login/authentication, localhost/internal sites, sites blocking automated access. For authenticated monitoring, consider our white-label solution with custom implementation.

Do I need technical knowledge to use URLWatch?

No! URLWatch is designed for non-technical users:

• Add monitors in 10 seconds (just paste the URL)
• No configuration files or settings
• Dashboard shows everything clearly
• Alerts come to your email automatically

What payment methods do you accept?

We accept all major credit cards through Stripe's secure payment processing:
• Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover
• Debit cards with credit card logos
• International cards accepted

Payments are encrypted and PCI-compliant. We never see or store your card details—Stripe handles all payment security. For white-label purchases, we also accept wire transfer for amounts over $1,000.

Do you offer monthly and annual billing?

Yes! Choose what works for your cash flow:

Monthly Billing:
• Starter: $4.99/month
• Pro: $24.99/month
• Cancel anytime, no commitment

Annual Billing (Save 33%):
• Starter: $39/year (vs $59.88 monthly)
• Pro: $199/year (vs $299.88 monthly)
• Paid once yearly, bigger savings

Most agencies choose annual billing to maximize savings. That's $20.88/year saved on Starter or $100.88/year saved on Pro—money that goes straight to your profit margin.

How quickly can I start monitoring after signing up?

Immediately! Here's the timeline:

1. Signup: 30 seconds - Enter name, email, password
2. Add first monitor: 10 seconds - Paste URL, click add
3. First check: Instant - See status immediately
4. Automated monitoring: Active - Checks start running automatically

Total time: Under 1 minute from signup to active monitoring. Agencies can onboard new clients and have monitoring running before they finish the contract call. No setup meetings, no configuration, no waiting.

Can I try URLWatch before committing to a paid plan?

Yes! Start with our free plan:
• 6 monitors included
• 6-minute check intervals
• Email alerts enabled
• No credit card required
• Never expires

Test the platform with your own sites. When you need faster checks (60 seconds), more monitors (20 or 100), upgrade to paid. Most agencies start free to test, then upgrade to Pro within a week once they see the value. Risk-free way to evaluate if URLWatch fits your needs.

How do I cancel my subscription?

Cancel anytime from your account settings in 3 clicks:
1. Go to Account → Subscription
2. Click "Cancel Subscription"
3. Confirm cancellation

Your subscription remains active until the end of your billing period, then automatically downgrades to Free plan. You keep your monitors (up to 6) and data. No penalties, no fees, no hoops to jump through. We make it as easy to leave as it is to join, because we're confident you'll stay.

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