--- title: Website & HTTP Uptime Monitoring description: Professional HTTP/HTTPS monitoring service by WatchFor. Monitor websites, REST APIs, and web applications 24/7. Validate status codes and response bodies, track uptime, response times and certificate expiry, and get confirmed alerts via email, Slack, Discord. Free plan available. canonical: https://watchfor.io/http-monitoring --- # HTTP/HTTPS Monitoring for Websites & APIs Know within minutes when a website or API goes down, slows down or starts returning errors. Every failure is confirmed from several locations before anyone gets paged. [Get started for free](/auth/sign-up)[View pricing](/pricing) ## HTTP Monitoring Features What the HTTP monitor checks, and how it alerts you ### Global Monitoring Check from 20 locations across seven regions; your plan sets how many regions each monitor uses. Response times come from where your users are, not from one data center. ### Fast Confirmation A failed check starts re-checks every 30 seconds from other locations, so a real outage is confirmed within minutes and a blip never pages you. Intervals go down to 30 seconds on Business. ### SSL/TLS Verification HTTPS checks fail on an expired, untrusted or mismatched certificate, and record the days left on it so you can alert well before it expires. ### Custom Validations Accept the status classes or exact codes you expect, and check that the body does or doesn't contain a keyword, wildcard or regex. For JSON fields and headers, use the API monitor. ### Performance Tracking Every check splits into DNS lookup, TCP connect, TLS handshake, time to first byte and download, so you can see which stage got slow. ### Smart Alerting Rules for unreachable endpoints, unexpected status codes, slow responses, body matches and certificate expiry, each with its own severity. Alerts go to email, Slack, Discord, webhooks and on-call escalation policies. ### Detailed Analytics Uptime based on confirmed incidents, response time charts, and every check per location with the captured status, headers and body of the response. ### Flexible Scheduling Set any interval from 30 seconds to 24 hours, down to your plan's minimum. Configure maintenance windows to pause alerts during planned downtime. ## A closer look Each check splits into DNS, TCP connect, TLS handshake and TTFB. Alert on unexpected status codes and slow responses, at two severities. ## Why Choose Our HTTP Monitoring Solution? Most outages show up as a page that doesn't load, an error status, or a response that suddenly takes seconds instead of milliseconds. An HTTP monitor checks for all three from the locations you pick, confirms a failure from another location before anyone is paged, and shows which stage of the request got slow. Want to test a single URL first? Try our free [HTTP status checker](/http-status-checker) or [HTTP header checker](/http-header-checker). [Start monitoring now](/auth/sign-up) Websites, APIs and any HTTP or HTTPS endpoint Track response times and availability Validate status codes and keywords in the response body Certificate checks and expiry alerts on HTTPS endpoints Custom headers plus Basic, Digest and Bearer authentication Multi-location checks for global coverage Weekly and monthly uptime reports by email Confirmed alerts via email, Slack, Discord and 13 more channels ## How HTTP Monitoring Works From URL to alert in four steps 1 ### Add Your Endpoint Enter your website URL or API endpoint. Configure check intervals, request method, headers, and authentication if needed. 2 ### Configure Checks Set validation rules for status codes, response time thresholds, SSL certificates, and content validation patterns. 3 ### Monitor 24/7 Probe locations in the regions you chose check your endpoint on your interval, tracking uptime and every stage of the response time. 4 ### Get Confirmed Alerts Once a failure is confirmed from other locations, you're notified via email, Slack, Discord, webhooks or your other channels. Track each incident to resolution. ## HTTP Monitoring Use Cases Perfect for any web service that needs reliable uptime monitoring ### Website Monitoring Keep your website online around the clock. Get alerted when it goes down, returns errors or loads slowly. Add a monitor for each page that matters, such as the homepage, login page or pricing page. To test a full login or checkout flow, use a Playwright browser check. ### API Monitoring Check that your REST APIs and GraphQL endpoints answer with the right status code and in time, using any method, headers, body and authentication. A keyword or regex on the body catches error payloads. For assertions on JSON fields, use the API monitor. ### E-commerce Monitoring Watch the URLs your store depends on: product pages, cart and checkout pages, and the endpoints of your payment provider. Failures are confirmed from other locations before you're paged, so a busy evening isn't interrupted by a blip. To walk through add-to-cart and checkout, use a browser check. ### SaaS Application Monitoring Watch login pages, dashboard endpoints and public APIs from several regions. Uptime counts confirmed incidents only, and SLA reports show what you delivered against your commitments. ## Frequently asked questions Everything you need to know about HTTP/HTTPS monitoring. [All questions→](/faq)[Ask us directly](/contact) What is HTTP/HTTPS monitoring? HTTP/HTTPS monitoring is a service that continuously checks the availability and performance of your web applications, websites, and APIs. It sends automated HTTP requests to your endpoints at regular intervals, validates the responses, and alerts you when a problem such as downtime, slow responses or unexpected errors is confirmed. How does HTTP monitoring work? What can I monitor with HTTP monitoring? How often are HTTP checks performed? What happens when my HTTP endpoint fails? Can I monitor HTTPS websites with SSL certificates? How do I validate specific response content? Can I import my monitors from another service? Do you support monitoring from multiple locations? What metrics are tracked for HTTP monitoring? ## From our blog Guides, deep-dives, and best practices from the WatchFor team [Monitoring ### How to Monitor a Website (a step-by-step guide) Feb 20, 2026·3 min readRead article](/blog/how-to-monitor-a-website)[Monitoring ### API Monitoring Guide: how to watch the endpoints your business runs on Jun 03, 2026·4 min readRead article](/blog/api-monitoring-guide)[Monitoring ### Uptime Monitoring 101: how to never be the last to know Jun 23, 2026·6 min readRead article](/blog/uptime-monitoring-101) ## Ready to Start Monitoring Your HTTP Endpoints? Keep your websites, APIs and web services covered with external checks from around the world. Get started in minutes with the free plan — no credit card required. [Get started for free](/auth/sign-up)[View documentation](/docs/monitors/web) --- Canonical page: https://watchfor.io/http-monitoring · Site guide: https://watchfor.io/llms.txt