Uptime monitoring

Every uptime monitor in SiteQwality follows the same lifecycle: configure → run on schedule → emit results → trigger notifications on state change. What differs is what the monitor checks.

Check type	What it checks	Use for
HTTP	A URL responds with the expected status, body, and latency	Websites, APIs, webhook receivers
SSL/TLS	A certificate’s expiry, chain, and validity	Anything served over HTTPS
Domain expiry	A domain’s registration at the registry: expiry date, registry holds, registrar and nameserver changes	Any domain you would lose if a renewal failed
Cron heartbeat	A scheduled job pinged on time	Backups, ETL, batch jobs
Browser	A full Playwright script passes in a real Chromium	Login flows, checkout, multi-page journeys

Picking the right check

• You have a URL that should be 200 OK. Use HTTP checks. You can also opt-in to a paired TLS check (cert expiry) and domain expiry check (domain registration) on the same monitor.
• You only care about cert expiry, not whether the site is up. Use SSL/TLS checks. Otherwise, just enable the TLS sub-check on your HTTP monitor.
• You want to hear before a domain registration lapses. Enable the domain expiry check on an HTTP monitor for that domain. It reads the registration from the registry, so it also catches a registry hold, a registrar change, and a nameserver change.
• You have a cron job that should run every N minutes. Use a cron heartbeat. Your job pings SiteQwality at the end of each successful run, and SiteQwality alerts when it doesn’t.
• You need to validate a multi-step user flow. Use browser checks. You write a Playwright script and SiteQwality runs it on schedule, capturing a HAR + video on failure.

Cross-cutting concerns

Regions

Every check runs from AWS us-east-1 (N. Virginia). It is the only location with check infrastructure, and it is the default for every monitor type. If you leave check_regions unset, this is what you get.

Three of the four accepted region values have nothing behind them

The check_regions field still accepts four values, because the API enum has not changed:

Value	Location	Runs checks today
aws-us-east-1	N. Virginia, USA	Yes. The default.
aws-us-east-2	Ohio, USA	No
aws-us-west-1	N. California, USA	No
aws-eu-west-2	London, UK	No

Selecting one of the bottom three does not produce checks from that location, and the API accepts it without complaint. Two consequences follow, and both bite:

• A configured location that never reports counts as not healthy, not as absent. A monitor set to ["aws-us-east-1", "aws-eu-west-2"] with min_healthy_regions: 2 can therefore never report healthy, because the quorum counts only locations that returned a success.
• min_healthy_regions only means anything across locations that actually run. With one location it is always 1 of 1.

Leave check_regions unset unless you have a reason not to. Additional check locations are on the roadmap and are not available today.

min_healthy_regions controls how many of a monitor’s configured locations must report healthy before the monitor itself counts as healthy. Configuring more than one location requires a paid plan; the API returns 403 Forbidden otherwise.

Schedules

Check type	Minimum interval (free)	Minimum interval (paid)
HTTP	60 s	30 s
Cron heartbeat	n/a	n/a (driven by your job’s ping cadence)
Browser	5 min	5 min
TLS, domain expiry (paired with HTTP)	daily, not configurable	daily, not configurable

Tags

Every monitor accepts a tags: string[] field. Use tags consistently (service:api, env:prod, team:platform) and you can:

• Match maintenance windows to silence by tag.
• Filter dashboards and alerts by tag.
• Roll up uptime by service or environment.

Services (logical grouping)

Beyond tags, you can attach a monitor to a service (service_id). Services are higher-level groupings. See Services in the dashboard.

See also

HTTP checks The most common monitor. Request a URL, assert on the response.

SSL/TLS checks Track cert expiry on its own or paired with HTTP.

Domain expiry checks Read the registration from the registry and alert before it lapses.

Cron checks Receive heartbeats from your scheduled jobs.

Browser checks Real Chromium running your Playwright script.