What should I use for simple uptime monitoring for a small website?

For a small website, the simplest good options are:

Easiest choices

• UptimeRobot — very popular, easy to set up, generous free tier, email alerts, can check every 5 minutes on free plan.
• Better Stack (formerly Better Uptime) — nicer UI, good alerting, status pages, more features, free tier available.
• Pingdom — reliable and polished, but usually more expensive than you need for a small site.

What I’d recommend

• If you want free and simple: UptimeRobot
• If you want a nicer dashboard and status page: Better Stack
• If you just want to know when the site is down: UptimeRobot is probably enough

Basic setup to use

Monitor:

• your homepage URL
• maybe one important endpoint like /health if you have one

Alerts:

• email first
• optionally SMS/Slack/Discord later

Check interval:

• 5 minutes is usually fine for a small website
• if you need faster alerts, use a paid plan or another service

One thing to consider

If your site is very small, also make sure:

• your domain DNS is monitored
• your SSL certificate expiry is tracked
• your host/server health is checked if you control it

If you want, I can suggest the best option based on whether your site is:

1. static,
2. WordPress, or
3. a custom app/API.