Simple HostMonitor

Simple HostMonitor is an easy-to-use application that monitors a list of websites and notifies you whenever they stop working. It doesn't contain complicated options or configuration settings, so it can be handled even by users with no previous experienced in networking utilities.

No setup required, besides .NET Framework

It's not wrapped in a setup package, so you can save the program files to a custom location on the disk and simply double-click the .exe to launch Simple HostMonitor. Otherwise, you can keep it stored on a USB flash disk to run it on any PC with minimum effort.
Just keep in mind that you must have .NET Framework installed. It doesn't add new entries to the Windows registry, so it doesn't increase the risk of OS stability issues.

Plain and simple interface

As far as the interface goes, the tool opts for a small window with a minimalistic design, where there's a list of predefined websites whose uptime it frequently verifies.
You can check out their URLs, state and notification status, change the notification status to success, fail or never, remove any entry from the list, as well as add new websites. The downloaded package also includes a plain text document with the hosts, which you can directly edit to alter the website configuration.
However, it doesn't implement an option for modifying the site checkup frequency. The app gets sent to the system tray on close and shows a balloon message whenever the website's status changes. It saves your settings on exit. There are no other notable options available.

Evaluation and conclusion

It worked smoothly in our tests, without hanging, crashing or showing errors. We haven't come across any problems. CPU and RAM consumption was low, so Simple HostMonitor didn't hamper PC performance.