In this article we introduce the basic functionalities of our platform and offer insights on features for monitoring your website's uptime and performance. Here you can view information about check fundamentals, including their use cases and how to configure them to work best for your use case. We also cover information about setting up effective alerting through your contacts, how to start with troubleshooting check failures, and how to view reports.
Table of Contents
- What is a Check?
- What Are Advanced Checks?
- Creating Your First Check
- How to Configure Alerts
- How to Add Contacts and Contact Groups
- How to Add New Monitoring Users
- Understanding Check Failures
- How to See Web Monitoring Reports
- Monitor Third-Party Dependencies with Cloud Status
- Visit Our Help Desk
What is a Check?
A Check monitors a URL or IP address at intervals as low as one-minute from various locations across six continents. When the URL or IP address fails, checks issue alerts that contain details of the downtime incident(s) to designated contacts.
The Overview of Checks page covers the various check types available to you as an Uptime.com user. The list below also identifies all available check types. Checks are divided into Basic and Advanced categories. Click on a check type for detailed information, including a guide on creating and implementing the check, as well as information about its unique fields:
Basic Checks
Advanced Checks
Creating Your First Check
To create your first check, click Monitoring > Create Check. We recommend you begin with an HTTP(S) check, as these are the most basic check type which will familiarize you with the interface. However, we also recommend exploring each monitoring check type based on your needs. Change the check type via the Check Type dropdown menu to any of our available check types.
Tip: When creating or editing a check, we recommend using the Run Test function to ensure the settings are correct. Once the basic information is entered, select a test location from the drop-down and click Run Test. This can help identify issues before the check is actively running in production.
Different Check Types will require different information and settings. Hover over the Info icon to see a short explanation, or read our Check Field Explanations on required and optional parameters.
The support article on Extended Check Options can help you further customize your checks to utilize:Validation & Security: enter credentials that are required to access the page such as username and password and configure validation options such as expecting a specific string on the page or specific status codes
- Validation & Security: enter credentials that are required to access the page such as username and password; configure validation options such as expecting a specific string on the page or specific status codes
- Execution & SLA: define the settings for sensitivity (the number of probe servers that must report an outage before the check issues an alert) and number of retries (the number of times a probe server will retry a check before it reports a DOWN status)
- Maintenance windows: prevent a check from issuing an alert while the maintenance window is active. More information on how alerts work in maintenance state.
- Escalations: send an additional alert once a pre-configured amount of time has passed (such as five minutes or one hour)
...and other options depending on the check.
What Are Advanced Checks?
These features provide some advanced monitoring functionality that better simulates the user experience of your website and provide additional monitoring methods:
- Real User Monitoring: Monitors the performance experience of visitors on your site
- Transaction Checks: Monitors web transactions on your site (e.g. login, registration etc.).
- Page Speed: Monitors and audits the performance and metrics of your site.
- API Checks: Monitors API using multiple HTTP(S) requests
- Custom Checks: Monitors periodic jobs and processes, issuing alerts according to whether an action occurs or a heartbeat is not detected.
- Cloud Status Checks: Monitors cloud services that provide third-party dependencies and receive alerts when their Status Pages post incidents.
How to Configure Alerts
Email, SMS, and voice call notifications are part of New User Setup and are created for the primary account holder upon first login. When you create your first check, it will be assigned to a Default contact that utilizes the account owner’s credentials.
In addition to email, SMS, and voice calls, Uptime.com supports most major third-party push notification providers that can receive incident alerts.
With our Push Notification Integrations, you can send alerts and metrics to where your team lives and works.
You may also want to set up an escalation policy so that alerts are only routed to specific teams once a check has been in the DOWN state for an extended period of time. View our document on creating responsive escalations to efficiently configure your escalation policies.
Subscribe to Uptime.com's status page to be notified in advance of changes to our probe server locations.
How to Add Contacts and Contact Groups
The Contacts page is used to add new contacts or edit existing ones. Depending on how the contact is configured, individuals or contact groups associated with each contact will be notified of a downtime incident via:
- SMS message and/or phone call
- Push notifications through a third-party provider
- The Uptime.com Mobile Application (iOS and Android Available)
Along with a contact’s Name, Email/Phone, and/or Integrations assigned, you can also see the number of Checks and Escalations configured. Access this screen by clicking Notification > Contacts.
For detailed information on creating and managing contacts, see the Overview of Contacts.
How to Add New Monitoring Users
Users generally have access to reports, can log into Uptime.com, can view checks (with higher permission levels able to edit or create new checks), and can receive emailed invoices and reports.
To do so:
- Navigate to Setttings > User Management and click Invite User
- Add the user’s first/last name, email, and time zone
- Select the user’s account Access Level, opt in/out of Two-Factor Authentication, and click Save
Understanding Check Failures
When a check fails, an alert is issued to designated contact groups and other integrated push notification systems that have been configured. This alert contains the date, time, and location relevant to the outage.
Depending on the check type, other technical data may be included such as server information or unexpected strings.
Please note: Group Check alerts will not contain locations relevant to the outage, only the configured down condition.
How to See Web Monitoring Reports
Use the Alert History Screen to get a quick or detailed view of alerts issued when that check failed.
If you have added a Real User Monitoring (RUM) check for your website, you can view RUM reports as well. NOTE: RUM Checks do require you to add HTML code to your website. See instructions here.
Alternatively, you can display the Uptime.com widget on your website to inform visitors of your server uptime statistics.
Once you have added checks to your account, you will notice check cards appear on your dashboard. You can customize your dashboard to filter which cards appear, in what order, and other settings tailored to your preference.
These check cards offer detailed statistics on current state, response time, and Uptime as a percentage:
Create your first SLA report by clicking Reports > SLA Reports, then click Create SLA Report. Edit any SLA report to add or remove checks (either by tag or individually), or change the logic that determines how the report is rendered.
To download a PDF or XLS SLA report, click Reports > SLA Reports. While viewing the report, click Download in the upper right and select the format (PDF or XLS).
Schedule a Report by clicking Reports > Scheduled Reports.
It is also possible to view an Uptime Report for a specific check, which provides a continuous granular view of domain uptime.
Monitor Third-Party Dependencies with Cloud Status
Cloud Status checks provide instant visibility into the health of third-party service providers. Incident reporting and alerting is available directly within the Uptime.com interface, seamlessly integrating with your alerts and contacts. Cloud status checks continuously monitor information sources like APIs and status pages for outage and incident alerts, displaying them alongside your own monitoring.
When adding a Cloud Status check, choose from over 1,200 cloud service vendors, including major services like Azure and AWS, along with specific components or servers.
View historical uptime information for your chosen service, and view incident data pulled directly from the vendor when they occur.
New third-party services are continuously added to Cloud Status checks to ensure your full stack is covered. For more information on creating and viewing Cloud Status checks, please view our documentation.
Visit Our Help Desk
Our Support Documentation covers Uptime.com’s functionality in greater detail. First, search our archives for an answer to your question. You can also Submit a Ticket if you are unable to solve your issue. We are happy to help!
Want to see our checks in action? Check out our 
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