I run a small two person agency managing around 40 WordPress sites on monthly care plans. Most clients pay about $50 per site, so I have to be careful about adding tools that increase our costs.

We currently use ManageWP for updates and basic uptime monitoring, but it only tells us when a site is reachable. Last month, a plugin update broke the contact forms on six sites, and we didn't catch it for a week. That was a wake-up call because the sites were online, but potential leads were being lost.

I'm thinking about setting up basic uptime checks for every site and actual form submission checks for the sites where leads matter most.

I've been looking at UptimeRobot, Better Stack, Pingdom, and Dotcom Monitor. I'd prefer to start with a free tier or trial and test it on a few sites before committing to another monthly expense.

For those running small agencies or managing multiple client websites:

- Have you found a free monitoring plan that works well across multiple sites, or do you eventually need a paid plan?

- Do you monitor actual forms and other critical functions, or just check whether the site is online?

- Do you include monitoring in your monthly care plan, or charge clients extra for it?

I'd appreciate hearing what's worked for you, especially if you're managing a lot of sites on tight margins.