Client website monitoring report, sent monthly

Your clients want proof that someone is watching their website and a way to read what happened last month without logging in. OctoPing emails each client a monthly summary of their sites, keeps a status page they can open on any day, and gives you the outage details behind the numbers.

The monthly summary your client receives

A client receives the summary once you add their address as a contact on their status page. At the start of each month they get an email for the month before. It's sent under the page's title, shows the OctoPing logo above that title, uses the page's primary color as its accent and links to the page. A line near the bottom says your workspace monitors the sites with OctoPing. It holds these figures:

• At the top: the number of sites, their uptime, the downtime and the number of outages for the month.
• For each site: uptime, downtime across its outages, and average response time.
• The days left on each site's certificate and the date its domain registration expires, for sites with those checks on. New sites have them on.
• Changes noticed that month in page text, email records, nameservers, hosting, robots.txt or page indexing and domain registration, listed only where something changed.
• Planned maintenance windows for those sites with their total time, marked as not counted as downtime.

Only contacts receive the summary, and visitors who subscribe for incident emails don't. Heartbeats aren't in it, and a page that shows only heartbeats sends none. The numbers come from the same calculation as your own monthly summary, limited to the sites on the page, so each site's uptime, downtime and outage count match that site's figures in your own summary.

OctoPing normally sends it on the 1st and retries on the 2nd and 3rd for any client whose email failed. Nothing is sent while the page is a draft or the workspace's monitoring is paused. You control who receives it and which sites it covers, each client can stop it from a link in the email, and you can switch it off for one contact.

Which sites a client's summary covers

A summary covers the visible sites of the page it comes from, and every contact on that page receives the same one. Build one page per client, and a second when some of their people should see different sites. The status page contacts docs cover seats and the allowance contacts share with subscribers.

What you see behind the numbers

Your own monthly summary goes to every member of the workspace, Viewers included, on the 1st. It adds a list of the sites that had outages with each one's downtime, and links into the app. It lists every site in the workspace, so keep it for your own review.

To explain a number, open the site. Recent Outages lists each outage in the last 30 days with when it started, how long it lasted, the cause (such as Timeout, DNS resolution failed, TLS/SSL error or an HTTP status) and when the site recovered. Those rows use the same calculation as the summary, so over the same period the counts agree. The list covers a rolling 30 days counted back from today, so it overlaps the summary's month without matching it exactly. The Activity Log lists outages and detected changes in one timeline.

A page your client can open on any day

The summary links to the client's status page. Each site there can show its last 90 days as daily status, the incidents you post appear as you write them, and maintenance running or starting within 7 days is listed. You choose whether uptime percentages and response times show, and a paid plan can serve the page on the client's own hostname. Post an incident when an outage happens, so the explanation is already on the page. See status pages.

An uptime badge puts a site's number in the client's footer or a report of your own, for any window up to 90 days. It counts back from the moment it loads, so save the image to keep the number as it stood on the day you sent a report. See the uptime badge guide.

Branded report documents

OctoPing doesn't generate a branded report document. If your retainer promises one, assemble it from the summary's figures, the Recent Outages rows that fall in that month and a link to the page. A badge counts back from when it loads, so its number can differ from the summary's. Branded monthly reports are on the roadmap list on the pricing page, with no promised date.

Set up client reporting

1. Put the client's sites in a group and build a status page that lists only those sites, following the guide to a white-label status page.
2. Publish the page and add the client as a contact, confirming they agreed to receive the mail. The welcome email goes out when you add them, and the first summary arrives at the start of the next month. The contact guide shows the welcome email and the unsubscribe links.
3. Check which checks each site runs. SSL and domain checks start on, so those dates appear in the summary. DNS, hosting, robots.txt and content checks start off, and the summary counts only changes your checks have seen. Test the content check on each page first, because page builders can hide headlines and prices.
4. Schedule a maintenance window for planned work, so the time shows in the summary as planned and stays out of downtime.
5. On the 1st, read your own summary and open Recent Outages for any client whose numbers need a note.

Seats, plans and the rest of how an agency organizes client sites are on website monitoring for agencies.

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 sends the monthly summary to client contacts, and the plan sets how many sites and contacts a workspace holds. 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 a client's site, put it on a status page and add the client as a contact to see it working.