HTTP Monitoring

Check any URL on a schedule and alert on downtime, slow responses, wrong status codes or missing content. HTTP monitoring is the most common way to confirm that a website or web endpoint is reachable and behaving as expected, and it forms the backbone of the uptime numbers shown on your status pages.

What it checks

An HTTP monitor sends a request to a URL on a regular schedule and inspects the response. From a single check it can tell you:

• Availability and uptime - whether the endpoint responds at all, measured consistently over time so you can see uptime percentages.
• Status codes - whether the response matches the status code you expect, such as 200, rather than an error or redirect.
• Response time - how long the request took, so you can spot slow responses before they turn into outages.
• Content assertions - whether the response body contains (or does not contain) text you expect, catching broken pages that still return a 200.

When a check fails, the result feeds your alert and escalation policies so the right people are notified immediately.

Configuration

When you create an HTTP monitor you configure the request and what counts as a healthy response:

• URL - the full address of the page or endpoint to check, for example https://example.com/health.
• HTTP method - the verb to use, typically GET, though other methods are supported for endpoints that require them.
• Expected status code - the status code that counts as healthy. Any other code, or no response, is recorded as a failure.
• Check interval - how often the monitor runs. More frequent checks detect problems faster.
• Timeout - how long to wait for a response before treating the check as failed.