Uptime monitoring means checking whether your website, API or service is reachable and responding correctly — from outside your own network, on a schedule, with alerts when something breaks.
Why external checks matter
Your server might look healthy from inside the datacentre while customers see errors. Hosting panels, local ping tests and log tailing all miss the view from the internet. External monitoring simulates what a visitor experiences: DNS resolution, TLS handshake, HTTP response and response time.
The goal is simple: know there is a problem before your inbox fills with "is the site down?" messages.
What a good uptime check includes
- HTTP status — Is the server returning 200, or a 5xx error?
- Response time — Sudden slowdowns often precede full outages.
- Content checks — Does the page contain an expected string? This catches "fake up" placeholder pages that return 200 but are not your real site.
- SSL validity — Expired certificates make the site unreachable in browsers even when the server is running.
How often should you check?
For business-critical sites, every 1–5 minutes is typical. Less frequent checks mean longer blind spots. UpMonix runs checks from external nodes and alerts via email, Telegram, Slack, SMS and other channels when thresholds are breached.
Getting started
If you only need a one-off test, try the free uptime checker. For continuous monitoring with history and alerts, start free domain monitoring — UpMonix sets up checks automatically from your domain name.