First monitor

Monitor types

This guide uses HTTP — the most common type. The steps for ping and port monitors are nearly identical.

Create an HTTP monitor

1. In the sidebar, click Monitors.
2. Click + New Monitor and select HTTP / HTTPS.
3. Fill in the required fields:

Name:             Production API
URL:              https://api.example.com/health
Check interval:   60s   (Free tier minimum)
Expected status:  2xx   (default)

4. Click Save.

The first check runs within a few seconds. You should see the status indicator turn green if the endpoint responds with a 2xx status.

Optional: keyword check

If your endpoint can return HTTP 200 with an error body (common with some frameworks), add a keyword check:

1. In the Advanced section, find Keyword check.
2. Enter a string that must appear in the response body — for example, "status":"ok".
3. If the keyword is absent, the check fails even if the HTTP status is 2xx.

Optional: SSL monitoring

For HTTPS monitors, enable SSL certificate monitoring to receive alerts before your certificate expires:

1. Enable SSL monitoring in the Advanced section.
2. Set warning thresholds (default: warn at 30 days, critical at 7 days).

Alert threshold

The alert threshold controls how many consecutive failures must occur before an incident is opened:

• 1 (default) — alert on first failure. Best for critical production endpoints.
• 2–3 — wait for N consecutive failures. Reduces alert fatigue from transient network blips.

Prober regions

By default, checks run from the EU West region. On Premium+ plans you can add additional prober regions (EU East, US East, US West) so checks run in parallel from multiple locations:

• All regions fail → monitor status: Down
• Some regions fail → monitor status: Degraded

See Concepts: Monitors for a full explanation of regions and degraded state.

Verify the monitor is working

After saving, the monitor list shows:

• Status — Up / Down / Degraded
• Last check — timestamp of the most recent check
• Response time — latest measured latency
• Uptime % — rolling 30-day figure

Click the monitor name to open the detail page with a 30-day uptime chart and incident history.

What's next

• First heartbeat — monitor cron jobs and background workers
• First status page — publish uptime data publicly
• Concepts: Monitors — deep dive into all monitor options