Monitoring for Agencies: Managing Client Uptime at Scale

If you run a web development, digital marketing, or managed hosting agency, you are responsible for the uptime of every client website and application you manage. One client’s outage is your problem. Multiply that by 50, 100, or 500 clients, and monitoring at scale becomes a critical business operation.

The Agency Monitoring Challenge

Agencies face a unique set of monitoring challenges:

• Volume: Dozens to hundreds of websites across different hosts, CMS platforms, and configurations
• Diversity: Each client has a different stack — WordPress, Shopify, custom builds, headless CMS, static sites
• Accountability: Clients expect you to know about issues before they do
• Budget pressure: Monitoring costs must be reasonable relative to retainer revenue
• Client communication: You need to report uptime metrics to clients, often monthly
• Turnover: Clients come and go, requiring frequent monitor additions and removals

Structuring Your Monitoring

By Client

Organize monitors by client for easy management:

• Client A: Homepage, contact form, e-commerce checkout, SSL certificate, DNS
• Client B: Homepage, blog, API endpoint, SSL certificate
• Client C: Homepage, booking system, payment gateway, SSL certificate, DNS

By Priority Tier

Not all clients pay the same. Differentiate monitoring levels:

Premium clients (30-second checks):

• E-commerce stores with active sales
• SaaS products with SLA commitments
• High-traffic media sites
• Business-critical applications

Standard clients (60-second checks):

• Corporate websites
• Marketing sites
• Portfolio sites
• Content-driven blogs

Basic clients (5-minute checks):

• Informational microsites
• Archive or legacy sites
• Low-traffic personal sites

Essential Monitors per Client

At minimum, every client should have:

1. Website monitor: Homepage availability and response time
2. SSL certificate monitor: Expiration tracking with 30-day advance warning
3. DNS monitor: Verify DNS records are correct

For e-commerce and application clients, add:

4. API/endpoint monitors: Critical application paths
5. Server monitor: If you manage the hosting
6. Domain expiry monitor: Prevent embarrassing domain lapses

The Business Case for Monitoring

Proactive vs. Reactive

Without monitoring, the workflow is:

1. Client notices their site is down
2. Client emails/calls you (often upset)
3. You investigate, find the issue, fix it
4. Client relationship is strained

With monitoring, the workflow is:

1. Monitoring detects the issue in 30-60 seconds
2. You get an alert and begin investigating immediately
3. You fix the issue, often before the client notices
4. You proactively inform the client: “We detected and resolved an issue with your site this morning”

The second workflow builds trust and differentiates your agency from competitors.

Monitoring as a Revenue Stream

Some agencies include monitoring in their retainer packages. Others offer it as an upsell:

• Basic monitoring: Included in standard retainer (website + SSL)
• Premium monitoring: $25-50/month add-on (full monitoring + monthly reports)
• Enterprise monitoring: $100+/month for complex applications with SLA reporting

The cost to you (StatusApp Business at $49/month for 500 monitors) is a fraction of what you charge clients, creating a profitable service line with almost zero marginal cost per client.

Setting Up Efficient Workflows

Alert Routing

Route alerts based on who can act on them:

• Hosting issues (server down, high CPU): Alert your DevOps/hosting team
• SSL certificate expiring: Alert the account manager to coordinate renewal
• DNS changes detected: Alert the senior developer
• Client website down: Alert the primary contact for that client

Use Slack channels organized by client or team:

#monitoring-critical — All critical alerts
#monitoring-client-acme — Acme Corp specific alerts
#monitoring-hosting — Server and infrastructure alerts

Monthly Reporting

Clients appreciate uptime reports. A monthly report should include:

• Overall uptime percentage for the period
• Any incidents with duration and resolution
• Average response time and trends
• SSL certificate status
• Recommendations for improvements

StatusApp’s analytics provide the data you need for these reports, including historical uptime, response time trends, and incident history.

Client Status Pages

For premium clients, offer a branded status page:

• Shows real-time status of their services
• Provides incident communication during outages
• Demonstrates your professionalism and transparency
• Can be white-labeled under their domain (status.clientdomain.com)

Scaling with StatusApp

Here is how StatusApp’s plans align with agency growth:

Agency Size	Clients	Monitors Needed	Plan	Cost
Small (5-10 clients)	10	~30	Pro ($15/mo)	$15/mo
Medium (20-50 clients)	50	~150	Business ($49/mo)	$49/mo
Large (100+ clients)	100+	500+	Custom	From $25/mo

At scale, the per-client cost of monitoring is negligible — often less than $0.50/client/month. Compare that to the cost of one client churning because you did not catch a downtime event.

Common Agency Monitoring Mistakes

Mistake 1: Only monitoring the homepage. A homepage can be up while the contact form, checkout, or blog is broken. Monitor the critical user journeys, not just the front door.

Mistake 2: Setting alerts to email only. Email is not real-time. Use Slack or SMS for critical alerts so your team can respond immediately.

Mistake 3: Not monitoring SSL certificates. An expired SSL certificate shows a scary browser warning that will cause every visitor to leave. Set up SSL monitoring for every client site with 30-day advance warnings.

Mistake 4: Not monitoring DNS. Accidental DNS changes, failed renewals, or misconfigured records can take a site offline. DNS monitoring catches these issues.

Mistake 5: Not adjusting monitoring for client departures. When a client leaves, remove their monitors. Stale monitors waste your allocation and generate noise.

WordPress-Specific Monitoring

Many agencies manage WordPress sites. Beyond standard website monitoring:

• Monitor wp-login.php: Catch brute force lockouts
• Monitor wp-cron: If you disabled WP-Cron in favor of server cron, set up a heartbeat monitor
• Monitor key plugins: WooCommerce checkout, form submissions, membership portals
• Monitor database connections: WordPress sites slow dramatically when MySQL is overloaded
• Monitor PHP errors: A 500 error page often means a PHP fatal error

Getting Started

1. Audit your client list: How many active clients and what services do you manage?
2. Sign up for StatusApp: Start with the free plan to test the platform
3. Add your highest-priority clients first: Get the most critical sites monitored immediately
4. Expand gradually: Add remaining clients over a few weeks
5. Set up alert routing: Configure team notifications
6. Create your first client report: Use analytics data to generate a monthly uptime report

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Scale your agency monitoring with ease. Start free with StatusApp and monitor your entire client portfolio from one dashboard.