Checks, locations & failure confirmation
How this is scored
What can be monitored and how reliably a failure is detected: HTTP(S) with status code and keyword checks, TCP and port, ping, DNS records, SSL certificate and domain expiry, cron jobs and heartbeats, multi-step API checks with assertions, browser or transaction checks of a login or checkout, the shortest check interval, the number and regions of probe locations, the re-check from a second location before an alert, timeouts and response time thresholds, and private locations inside the customer's own network.
0 — Runs no checks of its own; a status page or alerting tool that only receives signals from other monitors.
3 — HTTP checks of a URL at a fixed interval with an up or down result; keyword, SSL, cron and the probe locations are basic or not described.
5 — HTTP(S), keyword, TCP or port, ping and SSL expiry checks, cron or heartbeat monitoring, an interval of one minute or less, several named probe locations, a failure confirmed from a second location before alerting, and response times recorded per check.
8 — Multi-step API checks with assertions on headers and body, browser or transaction checks of a user flow, DNS and domain expiry checks, sub-minute intervals, probe locations listed by city with the confirmation logic documented, private locations or agents for internal services, and maintenance windows that pause checks.
10 — Coverage and accuracy a reliability team runs on: every check type above with code-based checks (for example Playwright or scripted tests) in version control, location-specific thresholds, false-positive handling and probe health published, and the detection method documented so a result can be reproduced.
The E-Commerce Operations Manager
The documented checks include HTTP and TCP with assertions on status code, headers and body, DNS and ping monitor types in the Terraform provider, all HTTP methods with custom headers, 30-second intervals on the paid tiers, 28 regions in total (6 per monitor on Starter), private probes behind our own firewall, and maintenance windows that stop counting against uptime. Confirmation discipline is documented: a failed check is retried from the same location, and an incident opens only when at least half the monitor's regions report a failure — the multi-region quorum I want before an alert wakes the duty phone. We found no public information on browser or transaction checks of a checkout or payment flow, on cron or heartbeat checks, or on SSL certificate and domain expiry monitoring. 2 7 13 14 18 20