Monitor types
Seven kinds of checks cover everything from a landing page to a nightly backup job.
- Getting started
Getting started
Monitor types
Seven kinds of checks cover everything from a landing page to a nightly backup job.
| Type | Use it for | What you configure |
|---|---|---|
| HTTP(S) | Websites, APIs, health endpoints | URL, method, headers, body, basic or bearer auth, expected status codes (for example 200-299 or 200,301), follow redirects, SSL validation, slow-response threshold |
| Keyword | Pages that return 200 even when broken | URL plus a word or phrase that must be present (or absent) in the response |
| Ping | Servers, routers, devices | Hostname or IP; alerts on unreachable hosts and reports latency |
| Port | Mail, database, game and custom TCP services | Hostname or IP and port number |
| DNS | Catch DNS changes or hijacks | Hostname, record type (A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, NS, TXT) and optional expected values |
| SSL certificate | Certificate expiry and validity | Hostname and how many days before expiry to warn |
| Heartbeat | Cron jobs, backups, queues | Expected interval and grace period; your job pings a private URL |
Check interval
How often each monitor is checked. The fastest interval depends on your plan: Starter every 5 minutes, Launch every 60 seconds, Growth every 30 seconds and Summit every 10 seconds. Once a monitor is down we re-check every minute regardless of interval so recovery is noticed quickly.
Timeout
A check that takes longer than the timeout counts as failed. 10 seconds suits most APIs; slow legacy pages may need up to 30.
Expected status codes
By default any 2xx response is healthy. Use ranges and lists such as 200-299,301 or 401 when an endpoint is supposed to answer with something else.
Slow-response alerts
Set a response-time threshold on HTTP and Keyword monitors to be told when a page is up but slower than it should be. You get one alert when the threshold is first crossed, not on every slow check.
Tags
Add tags such as prod, api or customer-x to filter and group monitors in the list and search.
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