Uptime Monitors

Uptime monitors are the foundation of website monitoring. They check if your website or API is responding to HTTP requests and track response times, status codes, and availability.

What Uptime Monitors Check

Key metrics tracked for your websites

Availability

Whether your server responds to requests within the configured timeout period.

Status Codes

HTTP status codes returned (2xx = success, 4xx/5xx = failures).

Response Time

How long the server takes to respond, tracked in milliseconds.

SSL Certificate

Certificate validity, expiration dates, and issuer information.

Configuration Options

Settings for your uptime monitors

URL

The full URL to monitor, including protocol (http:// or https://). You can monitor any publicly accessible URL.

https://example.com
https://api.example.com/health
https://shop.example.com/products

HTTP Method

The HTTP method to use for checks. GET is the default and works for most websites.

GET POST PUT DELETE HEAD OPTIONS

Timeout

How long to wait for a response before marking the check as failed. Default is 10 seconds.

Range: 1 to 30 seconds

Check Interval

How often to run the check. Faster intervals catch issues sooner but use more of your plan's check quota.

30 seconds 1 minute 5 minutes 10 minutes 30 minutes 1 hour

Understanding Monitor Status

What each status indicator means

UP

Your site is responding with a successful status code (2xx) within the timeout period. All is well.

DEGRADED

Some regions report issues while others show the site as up. This could indicate partial outages, regional network problems, or CDN issues.

DOWN

Your site is not responding or returning error status codes. All validating regions confirm the outage.

Best Practices

Tips for effective uptime monitoring

Monitor your homepage AND health endpoint
Your homepage tests the full stack, while a /health endpoint can catch backend issues faster.
Use appropriate timeouts
Set timeouts slightly higher than your typical response time to avoid false alarms, but low enough to catch real slowdowns.
Add content monitors for critical pages
A page can return 200 OK but show an error message. Pair uptime monitors with content monitors for complete coverage.
Group related monitors
Use monitor groups to organize by client, project, or environment (production, staging, etc.).