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Uptime Monitoring

/up-time mon-i-tor-ing/noun

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In brief · quick answer

Uptime monitoring checks your website at regular intervals from multiple locations to detect downtime, performance degradation, and SSL certificate issues before your users notice.

§ 1 Definition

Uptime monitoring is the practice of automatically checking your website's availability from multiple locations around the world at regular intervals (every 1 to 60 minutes). Monitoring services send HTTP requests, verify response codes, check for specific keywords in the response, measure response times, and validate SSL certificates. If a check fails, the service sends alerts via email, SMS, Slack, or other channels. Good monitoring catches problems within minutes and gives you the information you need to start fixing them. It is the difference between learning your site is down from a customer email and knowing before anyone notices.

§ 2 What to Monitor

Availability checks that your site returns a successful HTTP status code (200) within a timeout threshold. Response Time tracks how fast your site loads from different geographic locations. SSL Certificate Expiry alerts you before your certificate expires, preventing browser security warnings. Keyword Presence confirms specific text appears on your page (catches partial failures where the page loads but content is missing). API Endpoints monitor specific API routes for uptime and response correctness. Transaction Monitoring simulates user flows like login or checkout.

§ 3 Monitoring Intervals

Every 1 minute provides near-real-time detection but costs more and generates more alert noise. Every 5 minutes is standard for production sites. Every 15-30 minutes works for less critical sites. The right interval depends on your SLA commitments and how quickly your team can respond. If you guarantee 99.9% uptime, you can afford about 43 minutes of downtime per month. A 5-minute check interval catches failures well within that window.

§ 4 Choosing a Monitoring Provider

Look for monitoring from multiple global locations (single-location monitors miss regional outages), configurable alert channels (email, SMS, Slack, PagerDuty), public status pages to communicate with users, maintenance window scheduling to suppress alerts during planned work, and historical uptime reporting for SLA verification. Services like UptimeRobot, Pingdom, and Checkly offer different tiers for different needs.

§ 5 Note

Set up alerts for downtime AND recovery. Knowing your site is back up saves you from checking manually and lets your team stand down. Also monitor your monitoring: a dead monitor is worse than no monitor at all.

§ 6 Common questions

Q. How often should I check my site?: A. Every 5 minutes for production sites. Every 1 minute for critical or revenue-generating sites. Every 15-30 minutes is enough for low-traffic or personal sites.
Q. What happens if the monitoring service goes down?: A. Good monitoring providers have redundant infrastructure. You should also have monitoring from multiple providers or at least a secondary check to avoid false positives.

Key takeaways

Uptime monitoring checks your site from global locations at regular intervals to detect downtime fast.
Monitor availability, response time, SSL expiry, and critical content/APIs.
5-minute check intervals are standard for production sites.
Set up alerts for both downtime AND recovery so your team knows when to stand down.

How Atomic Glue helps

We set up uptime monitoring for every site we manage, with alerts to the right people at the right times. WordPress Maintenance plans include full monitoring coverage.

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# Uptime Monitoring

Uptime monitoring checks your website at regular intervals from multiple locations to detect downtime, performance degradation, and SSL certificate issues before your users notice.

Category: Devops

Author: Atomic Glue Editorial Team

## Definition

## What to Monitor

**Availability** checks that your site returns a successful HTTP status code (200) within a timeout threshold. **Response Time** tracks how fast your site loads from different geographic locations. **SSL Certificate Expiry** alerts you before your certificate expires, preventing browser security warnings. **Keyword Presence** confirms specific text appears on your page (catches partial failures where the page loads but content is missing). **API Endpoints** monitor specific API routes for uptime and response correctness. **Transaction Monitoring** simulates user flows like login or checkout.

## Monitoring Intervals

Every 1 minute provides near-real-time detection but costs more and generates more alert noise. Every 5 minutes is standard for production sites. Every 15-30 minutes works for less critical sites. The right interval depends on your [SLA](/glossary/sla) commitments and how quickly your team can respond. If you guarantee 99.9% uptime, you can afford about 43 minutes of downtime per month. A 5-minute check interval catches failures well within that window.

## Choosing a Monitoring Provider

## Note

## Common questions

Q: How often should I check my site?

A: Every 5 minutes for production sites. Every 1 minute for critical or revenue-generating sites. Every 15-30 minutes is enough for low-traffic or personal sites.

Q: What happens if the monitoring service goes down?

A: Good monitoring providers have redundant infrastructure. You should also have monitoring from multiple providers or at least a secondary check to avoid false positives.

## Key takeaways

Uptime monitoring checks your site from global locations at regular intervals to detect downtime fast.
Monitor availability, response time, SSL expiry, and critical content/APIs.
5-minute check intervals are standard for production sites.
Set up alerts for both downtime AND recovery so your team knows when to stand down.

## Related entries

Last updated July 2026. Permalink: atomicglue.co/glossary/uptime-monitoring