People sometimes ask why we built Site Check when JMeter exists. It’s a fair question — JMeter is the reference distributed load tool, and we still ship full JMeter execution underneath the Studio UI. Different tools for different jobs.
What Site Check is for
Quick verification. Three levels — free walk, £29 5-user, £49 50-user — answering one question per level. Twenty pages, up to five minutes, public certificate at the end. Zero install, zero configuration, run from a browser.
Use when: you want to know if your site is OK right now. Pre-launch smoke. Post-deploy verify. Embed-on-marketing-site proof point.
Don’t use when: you need scripted user journeys (login → search → add to cart → checkout), multi-region distribution, custom data, ramp profiles longer than 5 minutes, or sustained load over hours.
What full JMeter (via Studio /runs/) is for
Journey-driven tests that mirror real users. Recorded via the Contexta Recorder, structured into a JMX, executed via distributed JMeter masters and 1–N injectors across regions. Real user data, real session state, custom assertions, NFR thresholds gating the cert.
Use when: you have a checkout flow that needs to be verified end-to-end. Or a multi-step API journey. Or a customer SLA that requires N concurrent journeys for M minutes from K regions. Or any time the question is “what happens when 200 logged-in users do X simultaneously”.
Don’t use when: you just want to know if the home page is fast.
Side by side
| Site Check L1 | Site Check L2/L3 | Studio /runs/ JMeter | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Setup | Paste URL | Paste URL + verify ownership | Record journey or upload JMX |
| User profile | Single user, GET only | 5 / 50 concurrent, GET only | Custom journey, any HTTP method |
| Duration | ~30 sec | 2–5 min | minutes to hours |
| Geography | One region | One region | Multi-region (configurable) |
| Output | Free verdict | Verifiable certificate | Full report + Assure dashboard |
| Cost | £0 | £29 / £49 | Subscription tier |
| When | Every deploy | Pre-launch / proof point | Pre-Black Friday / SLA prep |
How they fit together
Most teams use Site Check first. If L3 looks healthy, that’s often enough. If you find issues — or if your sales process requires journey-driven proof — you graduate to /runs/ JMeter. The same Studio account drives both.
A typical pre-launch sequence we see:
- Site Check L1 on every PR merge to staging (free, automated)
- Site Check L2 on the marketing pages once a week (cheap, public-facing cert)
- /runs/ JMeter for the real flow — checkout, signup, login — once before any campaign
Site Check answers “is the site OK”. /runs/ answers “is the journey OK”. Both matter; neither replaces the other.
For specific configs and journey design, the Running tests Community board is where the JMeter folks hang out.