iKeepAlive.com is a service that will periodically connect to your website to make sure it is still running properly. If you have a site that is only frequented a few times a day, when the first user hits your site (after it has been idle for an hour or so), it actually takes longer for the site to display than the person who hits the site right after them. This is because of the web server saving memory by removing certain aspects of your site from memory. iKeepAlive.com acts as that “first user” and hits your site regularly to ensure the web server doesn’t unload your website, thus providing a better experience for your site visitors when they do arrive.
Once the service is officially launched, the cost will be $5/month or $50/year for monitoring of up to 100 websites. Many of you will never receive any emails from this service. The only time you should receive an email is if there is actually a problem accessing your website. This service was created to allow Purple Ant to be more pro-active in our monitoring, maintenance, and support of sites. For the past 6 months we have been testing this service internally with great success.
If you have a site, or manage any sites using the following technologies/software, you would likely benefit from this service:
- Microsoft IIS Web Server
- ASP.NET
- DotNetNuke (DNN)
- Community Server
- Other Content Management Systems (CMS)