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 Skeptic
HTTP(S) with keyword matching, TCP and port, ping, SSL expiry and domain expiry checks, plus push-based pulse monitoring, run from fifteen-second intervals out of ten named node cities with every probe IP published for firewall allow-listing. Failure confirmation is documented to my taste: a downtime needs three failed checks from at least two locations before anyone is paged, single-location checks are refused outright as false-positive-prone, and the vendor is candid that blips shorter than the check interval go unnotified. It stops short of the top band on coverage: no multi-step or browser-flow checks are described, DNS record checks sit under review as a feature request, and we found no public information on private probes inside a customer's own network. 1 5 6 10 11 12