Uptime Monitoring, Alerts & Site Health Guides

The fundamentals of knowing when a website is down or degraded: how uptime monitoring works, how often to check, how to alert the right people without false alarms, and what downtime really costs.

Start here

Uptime monitoring is the baseline every site needs, and it is easy to get wrong in both directions: checks too infrequent to matter, or alerts so noisy the team learns to ignore them.

New to monitoring? Start with what uptime monitoring is and how to set it up. Already running it? The false alarms, check frequency, and status page guides are where most teams improve fastest.

Suggested reading path

Pick the step that matches where you are.

1

Learn the basics

What uptime monitoring is, how to monitor website uptime, and what a sensible free setup looks like.

2

Tune checks and alerts

How often to check, how to get alerted, and how to cut false alarms so real alerts get attention.

3

Cover the dependencies

DNS, SSL, and Cloudflare cause outages that a simple ping does not explain.

4

Communicate and justify

Status pages keep customers informed, and the downtime cost guide helps make the business case.

All guides in this topic

Ordered from the most common problems to deeper reference material.

Article

What Is Uptime Monitoring?

Uptime monitoring checks whether your server responds, but it can't see broken checkouts, failed forms, or broken user journeys. Here's what you're missing.

Read What Is Uptime Monitoring?

Article

How to Monitor Website Uptime

Learn how to monitor website uptime, choose the right checks, and catch downtime before it hurts traffic, leads, or sales.

Read How to Monitor Website Uptime

Article

Get Alerted When Your Site Goes Down

Set up reliable downtime alerts: how often to check, which channels to use, how to avoid false alarms, and how to be notified the moment your website goes down.

Read Get Alerted When Your Site Goes Down

Article

How Often to Monitor Your Website

How often should you check your website? A practical guide to monitoring frequency by site type, what 1, 5, and 15-minute checks mean, and how to balance speed and noise.

Read How Often to Monitor Your Website

Article

How to Reduce False Alarms in Website Monitoring

Learn how to reduce false alarms in website monitoring so alerts stay trustworthy, with practical ways to cut noise from flaky checks and visual diffs.

Read How to Reduce False Alarms in Website Monitoring

Article

Website Monitoring Checklist

Use this website monitoring checklist to decide which pages, signals, journeys, and alerts your team should monitor first.

Read Website Monitoring Checklist

Article

Free Website Monitoring

How to monitor your website for free: what a free plan should cover, the limits to expect, and how to get started with uptime, SSL, and page-health checks at no cost.

Read Free Website Monitoring

Article

How to Set Up a Public Status Page

Learn how to set up a public status page for your website — what to include, how to manage incidents, and how to schedule maintenance so customers stay informed.

Read How to Set Up a Public Status Page

Article

How to Monitor DNS Issues

Learn how to monitor DNS issues, catch resolution failures and propagation delays early, and keep a domain reachable before visitors ever see an error.

Read How to Monitor DNS Issues

Article

How to Monitor Core Web Vitals

Learn how to monitor Core Web Vitals alongside website health checks, JavaScript errors, API calls, and user journeys.

Read How to Monitor Core Web Vitals

Article

What Is a Website Health Score?

Learn what a website health score is, how NorthDuty calculates it from uptime, performance, errors, journeys, and visual changes, and how to use it day to day.

Read What Is a Website Health Score?

Article

Website Downtime Cost

Learn what website downtime really costs in lost revenue, lost leads, support burden, and damaged customer trust.

Read Website Downtime Cost

Related NorthDuty pages

Product pages, tools, and comparisons connected to this topic.

Frequently Asked Questions

Answers to common questions about NorthDuty and website monitoring.

How often should uptime be checked?

Every 1 to 5 minutes for business-critical sites. Longer intervals mean an outage can run for a large part of an hour before anyone knows. Pair frequent checks with confirmation from a second location to avoid false alarms.

Is uptime monitoring enough on its own?

It tells you the server responds, not that the site works. Blank pages, broken layouts, failed forms, and checkout errors all return 200. Add page health checks and journey monitoring for anything that makes money.

Call To Action

Start monitoring your website with NorthDuty today.

Start with uptime, SSL, and DNS checks every 5 minutes, then add page health and journey monitoring on the same project when you are ready.

7 days with every feature unlocked, no credit card required — then keep monitoring on the free forever plan.