Uptime Monitoring

How are checks performed?

WatchSumo checks uptime by making a HTTP HEAD request against the URL you have setup. It expects to receive a 200 OK response back.

A HEAD request asks for a response identical to a GET request, but without the response body. By performing this check we reduce the bandwidth consumed by monitoring your website. Not all servers support HEAD requests, so if we receive an error we will retry the check with a GET request.

If we receive a 3XX redirection response, we will follow it and perform a check against the new URL. There is a limit on the number of redirections, after which we consider the website down.

How often are checks performed?

WatchSumo performs uptime checks every 1 minute. If the first check indicates the URL is down we will retry three more times at 30 second intervals. If all checks show there is a problem, will we alert you to the downtime.

What is downtime?

There are four ways in which we consider a website down:

1. We receive a response other than 200 OK
2. The URL takes longer than 10 seconds to load, or an error occurs while loading
3. More than 5 redirections happen when loading the URL
4. The SSL certificate cannot be trusted (read more about SSL / TLS monitoring)

If a website is down you can see details of the failed check to aid you in tracking down the issue. These include the response headers and body, the HTTP method, timings, and SSL certificate.