Monitoring and Alerting: How to Be First to Know Your Site Is Down

The worst way to find out your site is down is a message from a furious customer. Monitoring and alerting flip the script: a system checks your site around the clock and tells you the moment something breaks — ideally before anyone notices.

What to track

• Uptime: does the page load at all (HTTP 200)?
• Response time: is the site slow even though it „works"?
• SSL certificate: a warning a few weeks before expiry.
• Content and key functions: does expected text appear, does the cart/form work?
• Domain and DNS: domain expiry and correct records.

Check intervals

For most sites, a 1-minute check is enough. Critical stores can go to 30 seconds. Check from multiple locations to tell a real outage from a local issue at one probe.

How to avoid false alarms

Trigger an alert only after 2–3 consecutive failed checks, use multiple locations, and separate severity levels (warning vs. critical). That way the system does not wake you over one brief network hiccup.

Notification channels

Email is the minimum; for serious issues add SMS, push, or a Slack/Viber message. Build a status page too, so your team and clients can see the state without calling support.

With stable, high-uptime hosting, alerts are rare — see our plans and the SEO hosting guide for a reliable base.