The Complete Guide to Uptime Monitoring (2026)

Uptime monitoring is the foundation of operational reliability. Whether you're running a SaaS product, e-commerce site, or internal tools, knowing when your services go down—before users tell you—is essential.

This guide covers everything: what uptime monitoring is, how it works, which tools to use, and how to set up effective monitoring for your infrastructure.

Table of Contents

1. What Is Uptime Monitoring
2. How Uptime Monitoring Works
3. Types of Uptime Checks
4. Key Metrics and Concepts
5. Choosing a Monitoring Tool
6. Setting Up Monitoring
7. Alerting Best Practices
8. Status Pages
9. Advanced Topics
10. Common Mistakes
11. Related Resources

What Is Uptime Monitoring

Uptime monitoring is the automated practice of checking whether your web services are available and working correctly. A monitoring service sends requests to your endpoints at regular intervals and alerts you when something fails.

Learn more: What Is Uptime Monitoring

Why Uptime Monitoring Matters

• User experience — Users expect your service to be available
• Revenue — Downtime directly impacts revenue for many businesses
• Reputation — Reliability builds trust; outages erode it
• SLAs — Many businesses have contractual uptime commitments

What Uptime Monitoring Catches

How Uptime Monitoring Works

Monitoring Infrastructure:

┌─────────────────┐     ┌──────────────────┐     ┌─────────────────┐
│ Monitoring      │ → → │  Your Service    │ → → │ Alert           │
│ Locations       │     │  (Website/API)   │     │ Notifications   │
│ (NY, London,    │     │                  │     │ (Slack, Email)  │
│  Tokyo, etc.)   │     │  ✓ 200 OK        │     │                 │
└─────────────────┘     └──────────────────┘     └─────────────────┘
        │                        │
        └─── Checks every 30-60 seconds ───┘

1. Scheduled checks — Monitoring servers send requests at configured intervals
2. Validation — Response is validated (status code, content, response time)
3. State tracking — System tracks up/down state over time
4. Alerting — Notifications sent when checks fail
5. Reporting — Historical data stored for uptime calculations

Learn more: How to Choose an Uptime Monitoring Tool

Types of Uptime Checks

HTTP/HTTPS Monitoring

The most common type—sends HTTP requests to web endpoints.

Monitor: https://api.example.com/health
Method: GET
Expected: 200 OK
Content: Contains "status": "healthy"

Best for: Websites, APIs, web applications

TCP Port Monitoring

Checks if a specific port is accepting connections.

Monitor: db.example.com:5432
Expected: Connection accepted

Best for: Databases, mail servers, custom services

Ping (ICMP) Monitoring

Basic network reachability test.

Monitor: server.example.com
Expected: ICMP reply

Best for: Network devices, basic server checks

DNS Monitoring

Verifies DNS resolution is working correctly.

Monitor: example.com
Expected: Resolves to correct IP

Best for: Catching DNS misconfigurations, propagation issues

SSL Certificate Monitoring

Tracks certificate expiration and validity.

Monitor: https://example.com
Track: Certificate expiration
Alert: 30 days before expiry

Best for: Preventing certificate-related outages

Learn more: SSL Certificate Monitoring

Key Metrics and Concepts

Uptime Percentage

The percentage of time a service is available:

Learn more: What Does 99.9% Uptime Mean

Response Time

How long the service takes to respond. Important thresholds:

• Good: Under 200ms
• Acceptable: 200-500ms
• Slow: 500ms-2s
• Problem: Over 2s

Check Interval

How often monitoring runs. Common intervals:

• 30 seconds — Critical production services
• 1 minute — Standard monitoring
• 5 minutes — Less critical services
• 15 minutes — Development/staging

Confirmation Checks

Multiple checks before alerting to avoid false positives:

Check 1: Failed → Wait
Check 2: Failed → Confirm down, alert

Choosing a Monitoring Tool

Tool Categories

Learn more: Best Uptime Monitoring Tools

Key Selection Criteria

1. Check types supported — HTTP, TCP, DNS, SSL
2. Check frequency — 30s vs 5 minutes matters
3. Multi-region — Checks from multiple locations
4. Alerting options — Slack, email, SMS, webhooks
5. Status pages — Built-in vs separate tool
6. Server monitoring — Combined or separate
7. Pricing model — Per monitor, per host, flat rate

Learn more: How to Choose an Uptime Monitoring Tool

Wakestack Recommendation

Wakestack combines uptime monitoring with server metrics:

• HTTP/HTTPS, TCP, DNS, Ping monitoring
• Server agent for CPU, memory, disk
• Built-in status pages
• Nested host organization

Try Wakestack free — No credit card required.

Setting Up Monitoring

Step 1: Identify Critical Endpoints

List what needs monitoring:

Priority 1 (Check every 30-60s):
├── Production website homepage
├── API health endpoint
├── Login/authentication
└── Payment processing

Priority 2 (Check every 1-5 min):
├── Secondary pages
├── Admin panels
└── Internal tools

Priority 3 (Check every 15 min):
├── Development environments
├── Documentation sites
└── Non-critical services

Step 2: Create Health Endpoints

Add dedicated health check endpoints to your services:

// Simple health check
app.get('/health', (req, res) => {
  res.json({ status: 'healthy', timestamp: new Date().toISOString() });
});
 
// Detailed health check
app.get('/health/detailed', async (req, res) => {
  const dbStatus = await checkDatabase();
  const cacheStatus = await checkCache();
 
  res.json({
    status: dbStatus && cacheStatus ? 'healthy' : 'degraded',
    database: dbStatus ? 'up' : 'down',
    cache: cacheStatus ? 'up' : 'down'
  });
});

Step 3: Configure Monitors

In your monitoring tool:

Monitor: Production API
├── URL: https://api.example.com/health
├── Method: GET
├── Interval: 30 seconds
├── Regions: US-East, EU-West, Asia
├── Expected: 200 OK
└── Timeout: 10 seconds

Step 4: Set Up Alerts

Configure notification channels:

Learn more: What Causes False Downtime Alerts

Alerting Best Practices

Avoid Alert Fatigue

• Require 2+ failed checks before alerting
• Use multi-region consensus (2 of 3 locations must fail)
• Set appropriate thresholds (not too sensitive)

Learn more: The Real Difference Between Monitoring and Alerting

Route Alerts Appropriately

Include Context in Alerts

Good alert:

API Health Check Failed
URL: https://api.example.com/health
Status: Timeout after 30s
Region: US-East
Duration: 2 consecutive failures

Bad alert:

Monitor failed

Learn more: Why More Monitoring Locations Can Make Alerts Worse

Status Pages

Status pages communicate system health to users during incidents.

Public Status Page

For customers:

• User-friendly component names
• Clear status indicators
• Incident history
• Subscription for updates

Internal Status Page

For teams:

• Technical component details
• Internal services
• More granular status

Learn more: What Is a Status Page | Status Page Best Practices

Advanced Topics

Global/Multi-Region Monitoring

Monitor from multiple geographic locations to:

• Detect regional outages
• Measure performance from user locations
• Avoid false positives from single-location issues

Learn more: Global Uptime Monitoring

Combining with Server Monitoring

Uptime checks tell you IF something is down. Server monitoring tells you WHY.

Complete picture:
├── External: API timeout detected
└── Internal: Server CPU at 98%
    └── Root cause identified immediately

Learn more: Why Uptime Checks Alone Don't Work | Server Monitoring Guide

Synthetic Monitoring

Simulate user journeys, not just endpoint checks:

User flow:
1. Load homepage
2. Click login
3. Enter credentials
4. Verify dashboard loads

Learn more: What Is Synthetic Monitoring

Heartbeat/Push Monitoring

For cron jobs and scheduled tasks that need to check in:

Cron job → POST to monitoring → If no POST, alert

Learn more: Heartbeat Monitoring | Cron Job Monitoring

Common Mistakes

1. Only Monitoring the Homepage

Your homepage can be up while your API is down.

Fix: Monitor all critical endpoints separately.

2. Alert on Every Check Failure

Single check failures can be network noise.

Fix: Require 2+ consecutive failures.

3. Same Monitoring for Everything

Different services need different check frequencies.

Fix: Prioritize based on criticality.

4. No Multi-Region Checks

Single-location monitoring can have false positives.

Fix: Use at least 2-3 monitoring locations.

5. Ignoring Response Time

A site can be "up" but unusably slow.

Fix: Alert on response time degradation.

Learn more: Why Most Uptime Tools Miss Server Failures

Related Resources

Foundational Concepts

• What Is Uptime Monitoring
• What Does 99.9% Uptime Mean
• The Difference Between Monitoring and Alerting

Tool Selection

• Best Uptime Monitoring Tools
• How to Choose an Uptime Monitoring Tool
• Uptime Monitoring vs Observability

Implementation

• Global Uptime Monitoring
• What Causes False Downtime Alerts
• Why More Monitoring Locations Can Make Alerts Worse

Related Guides

• Server Monitoring Guide
• Status Page Guide

Get Started

Ready to set up uptime monitoring? Wakestack offers:

• Uptime monitoring — HTTP, TCP, DNS, Ping
• Server monitoring — CPU, memory, disk via agent
• Status pages — Built-in, branded
• Smart alerting — Multi-region consensus

Start monitoring for free — Set up in under 5 minutes.