Monitors overview
What a monitor is, how checks run, and the statuses you'll see.
A monitor is one thing you want to keep healthy. You give it a type and a target, choose how often to check, and WatchFor takes it from there.
Anatomy of a monitor
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Type | How the target is checked — HTTP, DNS, SSL, ping, and 20+ more. |
| Target | What's checked — a URL, hostname, IP, or address, depending on type. |
| Frequency | How often a check runs. Higher frequency = faster detection; the options available depend on your plan. |
| Locations | The global vantage points checks run from. Checking from many places avoids false alarms from a single bad network. |
| Alert rules | What counts as a problem — see Alerting. |
How checks run
Each check is one probe from one location. WatchFor runs them on your schedule from multiple regions. Before an incident opens, a failure is confirmed by several locations — so one flaky route never pages you. (More on this in How incidents work.)
By default checks use IPv4; many types let you choose IPv6.
Monitor statuses
🟢 Up
🟠 Degraded
🔴 Down
⏸️ Paused
⚪ Unknown
A single failed check shows as Degraded, not Down. "Down" is reserved for a confirmed incident, so the dashboard reflects real outages — not momentary blips.
Monitor types
WatchFor supports over 20 check types. Browse them by category:
Web & uptime
HTTP / HTTPS websites and APIs.
Heartbeat & cron jobs
Alerts when a scheduled job or worker doesn't check in.
MCP servers
Model Context Protocol handshake, tool inventory and drift detection.
Network
Ping (ICMP), TCP, UDP, DNS, and network path (MTR).
Certificates & domains
SSL/TLS certificates and domain expiry.
SMTP servers and email policy (SPF / DMARC / DKIM).
Security
Data-breach exposure and blacklist (RBL) checks.
Performance & content
Core Web Vitals, CDN, compression, CMS, sitemap, WebSocket and more.
Pausing, tags and maintenance
- Pause / resume a monitor any time — checks stop and no alerts fire.
- Tags group and filter monitors (in bulk, too).
- Maintenance windows suppress alerts during planned work so your uptime isn't dinged.