Technical Post: Set up a ping server that sends a text message to your phone for free

I am sure there are other ways to do this, but I just figured this one out and wanted to share it. It's rather handy.

The Goal
Set up a free ping server that will ping your server every few minutes (10 or so) to see if the server is up. If the server is down you should receive a sms text message to your cell phone.

The Solution
1) Create a GMail account - www.gmail.com

2) Create a Montastic account using the gmail address - www.montastic.com

2a) You might want to create the Montastic account using an email such as (companyname+monitoring@gmail.com where companyname@gmail.com is the actual email address. This will make it easier to filter the incoming mail.

3) Set up your Montastic account to monitor your website.

4) Set up your GMail account to filter out all messages sent to companyname+monitoring@gmail.com and forward them onto (cellphonenumber)@teleflip.com (eg, 4153892019@teleflip.com).

The Result
Now relax. If your website goes down then Montastic will send you an email that your GMail account will forward through the teleflip service which will send your cellphone a text message. All for free!

Obviously since this is all free you might have some doubts about reliability. All of these services seem to be reliable though, so I don't think it should be too big of a concern.