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 SaaS Platform Engineer
The protocol set is broad — HTTP(S), HEAD, TCP, DNS, SMTP, SSH, ping and push heartbeats, plus SSL expiry alerting, domain expiry with DNS record rules, keyword matching and configurable timeouts and trigger rates — and downtime is confirmed by additional servers before an alert goes out (four claimed on the homepage, up to three configurable via the API), which is exactly the false-positive guard I want before anyone is paged. Checks run from 43 locations in 30 countries, selectable by continent, country or city, at rates down to 30 seconds or constant, with maintenance windows that pause checks. We found no public information on multi-step API checks with assertions on headers and body, or on browser and transaction checks of a login or checkout flow, which is what keeps this short of top marks. 1 7 8 14