WebSocket Monitoring for Real-Time Apps
Chat, live dashboards, trading feeds, multiplayer games, collaborative editors — when the socket drops, the product feels dead even if your HTTP status page is green. WatchFor opens real WebSocket connections from around the world and alerts you the moment the handshake stops completing.
Checks built for real-time endpoints
More than an HTTP check with a different port.
Full handshake verification
Each check performs the complete ws:// or wss:// upgrade handshake — the exact path a browser takes — not just a TCP connect.
Ping/pong liveness
After connecting, the check exchanges WebSocket ping/pong frames and measures round-trip time — proving the connection is alive, not just open.
Message pattern matching
Optionally send a message and assert the response matches an expected pattern — verifying your socket API answers correctly, not just accepts connections.
TLS (wss://) support
Secure WebSocket endpoints are validated end to end, including the TLS layer your clients depend on.
Connect-time tracking
Watch how long the upgrade takes over time — a slowly degrading handshake is often the first sign of a saturated socket server.
Multi-region checks
Real-time apps are latency-sensitive. See connection health from several regions, not just one vantage point.
Confirmed alerts
Failures are verified from multiple locations before an incident opens — no pages for a single flaky path.
Uptime history & SLA
Connection success history and trends for every endpoint, ready for SLA reporting.
Why HTTP checks aren't enough
WebSocket infrastructure fails in its own ways: load balancers that drop upgrade headers, proxies that time out long-lived connections, socket servers that exhaust file descriptors while the web server stays healthy. An HTTP 200 from your homepage says nothing about whether clients can open a socket. Dedicated WebSocket monitoring closes that gap.
Catch broken upgrade handshakes your HTTP checks can't see
Ping/pong round-trips prove the socket is alive end to end
Pattern-match responses to verify the API actually answers
Detect load balancer and proxy misconfigurations that kill sockets
Track handshake time as an early sign of server saturation
Validate secure wss:// endpoints including TLS
Confirmed multi-region alerts — no single-path false alarms
Works alongside your HTTP monitors on the same platform
Alerts to Slack, PagerDuty, email and 20+ other channels
Uptime history per endpoint for SLA reporting
How WebSocket monitoring works
Real connections, on a schedule you choose.
Add your endpoint
Point WatchFor at any ws:// or wss:// URL — your chat gateway, live-feed server or notification service.
We open real connections
On every check, probes perform the full WebSocket upgrade handshake from your selected regions.
Failures get confirmed
A failed handshake is immediately re-verified from other regions, so only real outages open incidents.
You get alerted with detail
See which endpoint failed, from which regions, and how connect time trended before the failure.
Who needs WebSocket monitoring
Anywhere a live connection is the product.
Chat and collaboration apps
When the socket is down, messages stop flowing and users notice within seconds. Get the alert before support tickets arrive.
Live dashboards and feeds
Trading prices, sports scores, IoT telemetry — a silent socket outage means stale data presented as live. Monitoring keeps 'real-time' honest.
Multiplayer games
Connection failures translate directly to players leaving. Watch handshake success and connect latency across regions where players actually are.
Push and notification gateways
Your app looks fine while notifications silently stop being delivered. A dedicated WebSocket check catches the exact broken layer.
WebSocket monitoring FAQ
Common questions about monitoring real-time connections.
Keep your real-time layer really live
Add a WebSocket monitor in under a minute — free plan, no credit card required.