The 5 Best WordPress Monitoring Plugins for 2025 (& Why External Monitoring is Key)

Just like any other website, WordPress sites can—and should—be monitored by external tools to ensure their health and availability. However, many users naturally search for "monitoring plugins" to handle this directly from their WP dashboard. This approach presents a fundamental paradox, especially for uptime monitoring: if your website goes down, the WordPress plugin installed on it also goes down. It cannot run, and therefore, it cannot send you that critical "your site is down!" alert.

This is why true uptime monitoring is almost always performed by external services. These services use servers around the world to check on your site, and because they operate independently, they can reliably detect when your site is completely unresponsive and notify you immediately. For those interested in exploring these external options, you can find a comprehensive list of over 35 different tools right here.

So, why discuss plugins at all? While a plugin is not the right tool for primary uptime alerting, the tools on this list offer other valuable functions from within your dashboard. They can provide at-a-glance status updates (when the site is up), check internal server health (like database queries or PHP errors), or conveniently display data from external services.

With that important distinction in mind, let's explore 5 popular WordPress plugins that fall under the broad category of "monitoring," keeping in mind their unique strengths and inherent limitations.

Jetpack, created by the team behind WordPress.com, is a multi-purpose plugin with a powerful suite of features. Its free Downtime Monitoring module is one of its most valuable offerings. Once activated, Jetpack automatically checks your site every five minutes from its global servers. If it detects that your site is down, it sends an instant email notification to the site administrator, allowing you to take action quickly.

Advantages

• Easy setup and automatic activation.
• Provides instant email notifications for downtime.
• Comes bundled with other useful security and performance features.

Disadvantages

• Doesn't offer advanced uptime analytics (like historical graphs or statistics).
• Jetpack comes with many modules, which can feel bloated if you only need one feature.

ManageWP is a popular service for managing multiple WordPress sites from a single dashboard. The ManageWP Worker plugin connects your site to this central panel. Their Uptime Monitor feature can track all your connected sites at set intervals and send immediate email or SMS alerts if a site goes down. While uptime monitoring is typically a feature of their paid add-ons, it’s an incredibly powerful solution for agencies or individuals managing a portfolio of websites.

Advantages

• Ideal for managing multiple sites from one dashboard.
• Offers detailed uptime tracking with email and SMS notification support.
• Integrates seamlessly with other maintenance tools (backups, updates, security scans).

Disadvantages

• The Uptime Monitor feature is a paid add-on.
• The interface can be complex for beginner-level users.

Source: https://wpmarmite.com/en/wp-umbrella/

WP Umbrella is an all-in-one WordPress maintenance tool especially popular with agencies and developers managing multiple client sites. It offers a sophisticated uptime monitor that checks your site’s status from multiple locations worldwide at intervals as frequent as every two minutes. If it detects an issue, it sends instant email or Slack notifications. It goes beyond simple uptime by also monitoring performance metrics like TTFB (Time to First Byte) and SSL certificate validity, providing comprehensive health tracking.

Advantages

• Provides advanced uptime and performance data (TTFB, SSL status).
• Includes Slack integration and advanced notification options.
• Offers multi-site support and client reporting features for agencies.

Disadvantages

• There is no free plan, only a trial period.
• The interface is entirely in English.

The Super Monitoring plugin integrates a dedicated uptime monitoring service directly into your WordPress dashboard. The service checks your website’s availability every minute from multiple server locations to reduce the chance of false alarms. When a genuine outage is detected, it sends instant notifications via email or SMS. This ensures you’re immediately aware if your site becomes inaccessible from anywhere in the world, allowing for a swift response. Note that the plugin connects to the Super Monitoring subscription-based service.

Advantages

• Offers one-minute monitoring intervals and verification from multiple locations.
• The infrastructure is designed to reduce false alarms.
• SMS and email alerts are fast and reliable.

Disadvantages

• Requires a monthly subscription for its comprehensive features.
• The plugin acts as a bridge to an external service, rather than performing checks itself.

This plugin connects your WordPress site to an external service that can check its status at one-minute intervals. It allows you to add and track an unlimited number of sites/monitors from a single location and offers unlimited email alerts. One of its standout features is the breadth of its checks, which include not only uptime but also TTFB (response time), SSL certificate validity, and even domain expiry date monitoring, giving you a complete overview of your site’s accessibility.

Advantages

• Includes extra checks like SSL, domain expiry, and TTFB.
• Supports Slack, SMS, and unlimited email notifications.
• Offers a modern interface with detailed statistics.

Disadvantages

• The plugin requires you to register for an external service.
• The initial setup might take some time for some users.

While plugins offer great integration, you might prefer a solution that doesn't add extra code to your WordPress installation. External monitoring services provide a clean, powerful, and often more comprehensive alternative.

For an All-in-One SaaS Solution: RobotAlp If you want a powerful, user-friendly service that can monitor everything without touching your WordPress site, RobotAlp is an excellent choice. It’s an external monitoring platform that checks your site's uptime, performance, SSL certificates, keywords, and much more from multiple global locations. Its free plan is very generous, making it a perfect starting point.

Advantages

• Generous Free Plan: Its free offering is one of the best available, including 20 monitors and a 3-minute check interval.
• 14 Free Tools: You get free access to a full suite of tools, including Domain, Change, Keyword, DNS, SSL, Blacklist, DMARC, Server, Ping, API, Port, Safe Browse, and PageSpeed monitoring.
• Global Monitoring: Checks your website from 9 different locations to avoid false positives.
• Free Status Page: You get 1 free public status page to keep your users informed.
• External Service: As RobotAlp is not a WordPress plugin, it can reliably report when your entire site is down.

For a Self-Hosted Open Source Solution: Uptime Kuma If you prefer to have complete control over your data and monitoring infrastructure, Uptime Kuma is the leading open-source choice. You host it on your own server, it has a beautiful modern interface, and you can add unlimited monitors to check all your websites and services.

Advantages

• Completely Free & Open-Source: No subscriptions or hidden costs.
• Full Data Control: Since you host it yourself, all your data remains private.
• Unlimited Monitors: Track as many services as you need without any limits.
• Highly Customizable: Supports a wide range of protocols and has extensive notification integrations.

• Uptime Kuma is a self-hosted solution. This means you need to run it on your own external server (like a VPS), which requires some technical expertise for setup, configuration, and ongoing maintenance.