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This page explains the ideas you will meet throughout the product. Each section links to the guide that goes deeper.

Monitors

A monitor is one thing you want to watch: a website, an API, a server, a port, a DNS record or a scheduled job. UptimeIO supports six types. Monitors can be organized into groups, tagged, paused and resumed.

Check intervals

The interval is how often a monitor runs. The longest allowed is 24 hours. The shortest depends on your plan: See Plans & Billing for monitor limits.

Probe locations

Checks run from multiple probe locations (see the full list). Running checks from several places tells you whether a problem is real and whether it affects everyone or only some regions.
  • On Pro and Scale you choose which locations run regular checks for each monitor (at least one).
  • On Free, UptimeIO chooses the locations automatically.
Confirmation checks can use locations beyond your selection, so the confirmation rule below always holds.

Incidents

An incident is a period in which a monitor is failing. UptimeIO is deliberately careful about opening one.

How an incident opens

1

A check fails

One failed check is not enough to declare an outage.
2

Retries from other locations

The check is repeated from other locations a second apart.
3

Confirmation

An incident opens only when several locations confirm the failure. You are then notified.

How an incident resolves

Recovery is confirmed the same way, by several locations. This prevents an incident from flapping open and closed on a single lucky check.

Incident causes

An incident records why it opened: Slow response incidents use the threshold you set under Slow Response Alert on the monitor. They resolve once the response time stays below 80% of the threshold for three consecutive checks.

Incident status

Incidents move through Open, Acknowledged, Resolved and Closed. Read Understanding Incidents for the full lifecycle.

SSL and domain expiry

HTTP monitors can also watch the SSL certificate, and HTTP, keyword and DNS monitors can watch the domain’s registration.
  • SSL certificate expiry: warnings are sent to your notification destinations at the thresholds you select from 30, 15, 7 and 1 days before expiry (default: 7 and 1). They do not open an incident. An expired or invalid certificate does open an incident, which resolves automatically once a valid certificate is served.
  • Domain expiry: the registration expiry date is looked up automatically and warnings are sent at the thresholds you select from 30, 15, 7 and 1 days before it (default: all four). The domain must be a publicly registered domain name; IP addresses and internal names are not supported. Some country-code domains do not publish expiry dates; for those, UptimeIO reports the date as not published and sends no warnings.

Notification destinations

A destination is a place alerts are delivered. You add destinations once for your organization, choose which events each one receives, and then assign them to monitors. Set destinations up under Destinations in the sidebar. See Notifications and the pages under Integrations.

Status pages

A status page is a public page that shows the live state of the monitors you choose. Use one to keep customers informed.

Branding

Logo, colors and custom CSS on every plan

Custom domains

Serve the page from your own domain, for example status.yourcompany.com (Pro and Scale)

Subscribers

Visitors can subscribe to incident updates

Maintenance and announcements

Announce planned maintenance and post updates
Free includes 1 status page, Pro 20 and Scale 100. Removing UptimeIO branding (whitelabel) requires Scale. Manage them under Status Pages in the sidebar.

Heartbeat monitoring

Heartbeat monitors work the other way round: instead of UptimeIO checking your service, your job calls UptimeIO.
1

Create the monitor

You choose an expected interval and a grace period. UptimeIO gives you a unique URL such as https://heartbeat.uptimeio.com/heartbeat/hb_abc123def456.
2

Ping it from your job

3

UptimeIO watches the schedule

If no ping arrives within the expected interval plus the grace period, an incident opens. It resolves after three consecutive on-time pings.
The expected interval follows your plan’s shortest interval (5 minutes on Free, 1 minute on Pro and Scale). See Heartbeat monitoring for rate limits and options.

Data retention

UptimeIO keeps check history for 90 days on Free and 365 days on Pro and Scale. Uptime percentages are calculated from the data in that window. Older check data is removed.

Teams and projects

Monitors, groups and incidents live in a project, and projects live in an organization. Free is for a single owner with one project. Pro and Scale allow team members and projects up to fair-use limits of 100 each; there is no per-seat charge. See Projects and Team members and roles.

Next steps

Quick start

Create your first monitor

Monitor types

Learn each type in detail

Notifications

Set up alerts

Status pages

Publish a public status page