Creating and configuring a monitor

Create a monitor from the dashboard (“New monitor”). The form adapts to the type you choose. Depending on type, the options include:

Basics

• Name — a friendly label.
• Monitor type — HTTP, Keyword, API, Port, or Heartbeat (see Monitor types).
• URL / host — the address to check (for Port monitors this is the bare host; for Heartbeat there’s no URL — you’re given a ping URL instead).
• Port — the TCP port (Port monitors only).
• Group — optionally file it under a group.

Schedule & timing

• Check interval — how often to run: 1, 5, 15, or 30 minutes.
• Timeout — how long to wait for a response before failing: 5, 10, 15, 30, or 60 seconds.

Request options (HTTP / Keyword / API)

• Request method — GET, HEAD, POST, PUT, PATCH, or DELETE.
• Expected status codes — which HTTP codes count as “up” (default 200).
• Request headers — custom headers (e.g. an API key or Accept header).
• Request body — a payload for POST/PUT/PATCH.
• Basic auth — username and password for HTTP Basic authentication.
• Follow redirects — whether 3xx redirects are followed.
• Ignore SSL errors — accept the response even if the TLS certificate is invalid (useful for staging).

Type-specific

• Keyword — the keyword and match rule (contains / does not contain).
• API — the assertion list and the all/any mode.
• Heartbeat — expected interval and grace period.

Certificate & domain checks (opt-in)

• Check SSL certificate — off by default. See SSL certificate monitoring.
• Check domain expiration — off by default. See Domain expiration monitoring.

Outage investigation

• Investigate outages (AI) — on by default. When enabled, a down incident triggers the AI triage. Turn it off for monitors where a root cause is obvious or irrelevant (for example, a third-party status API you track only as a signal).

You can edit any of these later, pause a monitor (checks stop, nothing alerts), or run a check now on demand from the monitor’s page.