1
Learn the basics
What uptime monitoring is, how to monitor website uptime, and what a sensible free setup looks like.
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.
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
How to monitor website uptime properly: check intervals, locations, false alarms — and the failures that return HTTP 200 so uptime checks never see them.
Read How to Monitor Website UptimeArticle
Get Alerted When Your Site Goes Down
Set up alerts that catch more than downtime: check frequency, channels, false alarms, and alerting on the checkout, form and page failures that return HTTP 200.
Read Get Alerted When Your Site Goes DownArticle
How Often to Monitor Your Website
How often should you check your website? Monitoring frequency by site type, what 1, 5 and 15-minute checks mean, and how to balance speed against noise.
Read How Often to Monitor Your WebsiteArticle
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 health checks and user journeys.
Read How to Reduce False Alarms in Website MonitoringArticle
Website Monitoring Checklist: 41 Checks
Use this 41-point website monitoring checklist to cover uptime, SSL, DNS, forms, checkout, journeys, alerts, launch checks, and incident response.
Read Website Monitoring Checklist: 41 ChecksArticle
Free Website Monitoring
How to monitor your website for free: what a free plan should cover, the limits to expect, and how to start with uptime, SSL and page-health checks.
Read Free Website MonitoringArticle
How to Set Up a Public Status Page
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 PageArticle
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 IssuesArticle
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 VitalsArticle
What Is a Website Health Score?
Learn what a website health score is, how NorthDuty calculates it from uptime, performance, stability, and errors, and how to use it day to day.
Read What Is a Website Health Score?Article
How a Website Health Check Works
What a real website health check measures, why we don't launch a browser for every check, and why "not measured" must never look like "no errors". The code is open source.
Read How a Website Health Check WorksArticle
Website Downtime Cost
Learn what website downtime really costs in lost revenue, lost leads, support burden, and damaged customer trust.
Read Website Downtime CostRelated NorthDuty pages
Product pages, tools, and comparisons connected to this topic.
Feature
Uptime Monitoring
Monitor uptime every 5 minutes by default with HTTP, SSL, DNS, blank-page detection, broken resources, JavaScript errors, and API call tracking.
Explore Uptime MonitoringFeature
Alerting
Send NorthDuty alerts to email, Slack, Teams, Discord, Google Chat, webhooks, Telegram, WhatsApp, and SMS.
Explore AlertingFeature
Status Pages
Publish a public status page, open detected findings as incidents, track alert-driven incidents automatically, and schedule maintenance windows.
Explore Status PagesFeature
SSL Certificate Monitoring
Monitor SSL certificates with NorthDuty website health checks so validity, trust, and expiry issues are visible before visitors are blocked.
Explore SSL Certificate MonitoringHub
Free Tools
Free website checker tools: robots.txt tester, sitemap validator, broken link checker, SSL, DNS, HTTP header, meta tag, response time and page size checks.
Browse Free ToolsFrequently 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.
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 Pro features and limits, no credit card — then keep one daily journey on the free plan.