Choosing a Monitor type
A Monitor watches one address for you: a URL, a host and port, a host, or a scheduled job that calls us. Press New Monitor in a Project, and the first step asks what it should watch. Pick the type that asks the question you care about.
The four types
Section titled “The four types”- Website asks a URL for a page or an API answer, and checks its status, its speed and what it says. Pick it for anything that answers over http or https. See Website and API Monitors.
- Port checks that a port on a host takes connections, such as a database or a mail server. Pick it for a service that does not answer over http. See TCP Monitors.
- Server pings a host and counts the replies. Pick it for a machine with no service you want to watch, when it answers ping. See Ping Monitors.
- Heartbeat waits for your own cron job or worker to call a URL we give you, and tells you when the calls stop. Pick it for work that runs on a schedule and that we cannot call ourselves. See Heartbeat Monitors.
The Checks each type carries
Section titled “The Checks each type carries”A Check is one question asked of a Monitor. A Monitor of each type carries these:
| Type | Its Checks |
|---|---|
| Website HTTP | Uptime, Performance, Certificate, Domain |
| Port TCP | Uptime, Performance |
| Server Ping | Uptime, Performance |
| Heartbeat Cron | Uptime |
Uptime decides whether the Monitor is up, and is always on. Performance warns when answers get slower than the threshold you set. Certificate reads the certificate of an https address and tells you before it expires. Domain tells you before the domain’s registration expires, when its registry publishes the date.
Every Check is included on every Plan. Checks and their status says how each one decides its status.
The type and the address never change
Section titled “The type and the address never change”You cannot change a Monitor’s type, or the address it watches, after you create it. Everything a Monitor records, its uptime, its Incidents and its answer times, is about that one address, so it cannot stand under another.
You can still change the request settings, the assertions, the interval, the locations and the name. To watch another address, create a new Monitor. In the old Monitor’s settings, Create one from this Monitor opens a new Monitor with the same settings filled in. The old one keeps its history until you delete it.