Quick verdict
Little Warden describes itself as “a sense check of some of the common mistakes that happen during the course of running one or more websites.” It offers more than 30 checks, and you hear when a result changes. OctoPing runs fewer kinds of check on each site, and offers uptime from four vantage points, status pages for your clients, client contacts who get alerts and a monthly summary, and maintenance windows.
In our view, Little Warden fits technical SEO hygiene work best, and OctoPing fits an agency that also answers to clients for uptime.
Choose Little Warden if
- You check page setup after every release. The table lists the setup checks Little Warden runs that OctoPing has no counterpart for.
- You want rules on page content. Little Warden offers a text or regular expression check, element monitoring, and title tag and meta description change detection, and XPath monitoring with rules for text, regular expressions, numbers and character counts.
- You watch many URLs. Its Agency plan covers 650 URLs for £59.99 a month.
Choose OctoPing if
- Uptime is part of what you promise. OctoPing's primary checker tests each site every 5 minutes by default and as often as every minute on every plan, and weighs each failure against probes in the US, Europe and Asia.
- Clients need to see it. White-label status pages are unlimited on every plan, and client contacts get alerts and a monthly summary with no login and no seat.
- You plan maintenance. A maintenance window pauses down alerts, keeps the time out of uptime and shows on the client's status page.
- You want longer history on a small plan. Starter keeps 90 days of history. Little Warden's Freelancer plan keeps 2 weeks.
What each tool checks
| Capability | Little Warden | OctoPing |
|---|---|---|
| Domain and SSL expiry | Domain name and SSL certificate expiration checks | Both, warning 30 days ahead by default |
| Uptime | A URL response check that compares the HTTP status code with the one you expect, 200 by default, and follows up to 5 redirects. Up to once an hour per URL, per its docs. | The primary checker tests every 5 minutes by default, and probes in the US, Europe and Asia confirm or contradict a failure. The fastest interval is every minute on Starter, and every 30 seconds on 15 sites on Agency and 50 on Scale. |
| DNS and hosting | Nameserver and MX record change detection. Alerts on any change of the server's IP address by default, with an option to alert on a move to another country. | Nameserver and mail records, old and new side by side. A hosting alert names the old and new network (ASN) or CDN when a site moves, with no address to set, and an address that changes inside one network sends nothing. |
| robots.txt and indexing | Robots.txt change monitoring. An indexability check that reads robots.txt, the X-Robots-Tag header and the meta robots tag. | Alerts on any robots.txt change and flags a Disallow: / block, plus a noindex check of the monitored URL's meta robots tag and X-Robots-Tag header, read twice before it alerts. It reads that one URL and doesn't crawl the site. |
| Page content | A text or regular expression check, element monitoring, and title tag and meta description change detection. | A diff of the page's main text. The extractor can drop navigation, buttons and footers, and on some page builders headlines and prices. There are no ignore rules. |
| Page setup | Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager change detection. HTTP to HTTPS, WWW to non-WWW and geo redirect checks, and a 404 page response check. Sitemap validation and XML sitemap change monitoring. Rel canonical checking, hreflang change monitoring and Core Web Vitals monitoring. A malware detection check. | Not offered |
| Status pages and client summaries | Status pages: not listed on its features page. Clients can be invited to the account. | Unlimited white-label pages on every plan. Contacts get alerts for a page's sites and a monthly summary of them, with no login and no seat. |
| Alert channels | Slack, email, messenger, API and web hook | Email, Slack, Discord, signed webhooks and browser push |
Little Warden column read from: littlewarden.com/features, docs.littlewarden.com/docs/checks/response/url-response, docs.littlewarden.com/docs/getting-started/what-is-little-warden, docs.littlewarden.com/docs/checks/technical/ipaddress, docs.littlewarden.com/docs/checks/search-engine/indexability, docs.littlewarden.com/docs/checks/content/xpath-monitoring, littlewarden.com.
Pricing at equal site counts
Little Warden prices in pounds and OctoPing in dollars. The table shows each price in its own currency, per month on monthly billing. Each offers 2 months free on annual billing. Little Warden prices are from littlewarden.com/pricing.
| Size | OctoPing | Little Warden |
|---|---|---|
| 20 | Starter: $19 for 20 sites ($0.95 a site), 90 days of history, 2 seats | Freelancer: £24.99 for 20 URLs, 2 weeks of history, 1 team member |
| 60 | Agency: $49 for 60 sites ($0.82 a site), 1 year of history, 8 seats | Small Team: £34.99 for 100 URLs, the smallest plan above 60, 1 month of history, unlimited team members |
| 200 | Scale: $129 for 200 sites ($0.65 a site), 1 year of history, unlimited seats | Agency: £59.99 for 650 URLs, the smallest plan above 200, 3 months of history, unlimited team members |
In our read, converting at the 1.33 rate on Little Warden's own dollar tab, OctoPing is the lower price at 20 sites ($19 against about $33.24). Little Warden is slightly lower at 60 (about $46.54 against $49) and the cheaper plan at 200 (about $79.79 for 650 URLs against $129).
Where Little Warden does more
- More kinds of check. The setup checks in the table and the XPath rules have no OctoPing equivalent. Little Warden also has an Is Indexed check that uses a Google Search Console connection to see whether a page is in the Google index, and an export of all changes through Google Sheets.
- Address changes. Little Warden alerts on any change of the server's IP address by default, with an option to alert on a move to another country, which includes moves inside one network that OctoPing's hosting check leaves quiet.
- API access and trial. Little Warden offers API access on the Small Team plan and above and a 40-day trial, where OctoPing's trial runs 14 days. OctoPing's REST API is still on the roadmap list on the pricing page. OctoPing refunds a first payment asked for within 30 days, which is close to Little Warden's 30-day money-back guarantee.
Moving from Little Warden to OctoPing
A Little Warden URL maps to one OctoPing site, so 100 URLs become 100 sites.
Add each URL as a site
Follow add your first site. Domain and SSL monitoring start switched on.
Switch on the checks you used
DNS, hosting, robots.txt and content checks start switched off, so turn them on where a change matters. See DNS monitoring, hosting change detection and robots.txt monitoring.
Test the content check on your own page
Change a line you care about and see whether the next check reports it. See website change detection.
Set up alerts and client pages
Connect Slack, build a white-label status page and add the client as a contact.
Decide what stays in Little Warden
Keep it for the setup checks OctoPing doesn't run until you've decided whether you need them.
Who builds OctoPing
OctoPing is built by Axiolo, which uses it to watch its clients' marketing websites and landing pages. The checks, the client status pages and the monthly summaries are the ones Axiolo relies on for that work.
How it fits the price
Every plan includes all eight check types on each site, unlimited white-label status pages and client contacts. Plans start at $19 a month for 20 sites. See pricing for the full list.
Every account starts with a 14-day free trial. No card required. Start your 14-day trial and add one client's site to see it working.
Last reviewed
Related
- ForWebsite monitoring for marketing agenciesWatch client campaign landing pages and domains for errors, lapsing registrations, host and DNS changes and robots.txt blocks, and show the client you're on it.
- Featurerobots.txt and noindex monitoring with alerts for accidental blocksGet an alert when a site's robots.txt changes or its page picks up a noindex tag, with a line diff and a warning when search engines go from allowed to blocked.
- FeatureWhite-label status pages with custom domains and subscribersPublish a status page in your client's branding, with incidents, scheduled maintenance, email subscribers, feeds and client contacts. Custom domains on paid plans.
- FeatureWebsite uptime monitoring with the cause in every alertCheck client sites as often as every 30 seconds, see why a check failed, and flag slow responses as degraded. Planned work stays out of your uptime numbers.
- GuideAdd a client as a status page contactSend a client every alert for their sites and a monthly summary by email, without giving them a login or using a seat.