Regional outages
CDN edges, DNS resolvers, and transit paths fail unevenly. One probe location can stay green while customers elsewhere bounce.
Availability · Continuous checks
Uptime monitoring explained for operators.
Uptime monitoring is continuous availability checking: scheduled probes that ask whether a URL answers, then alert when it does not. For portfolios, the useful version is multi-region, named, and tied to the same queue as SSL and DNS, not a lonely green badge on one site.
By Muhammad Hamza, Founder of AeptoPublished Updated
What is uptime monitoring, and what is it not?
What it is, and what it does not cover.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What does it do? | Sends repeated requests to a URL and records success or failure against your rules: status code, timeout, sometimes a keyword in the response. |
| Why does it matter? | You learn about an outage before a customer ticket or a "is it down for you?" message does. |
| What does it not do? | Full application performance management, synthetic browser journeys for every flow, or proof that the page body is healthy. |
| Where is the gap? | A host can answer 200 while WordPress shows a critical error, MySQL is gone, or a plugin shows a maintenance page. |
What does healthy uptime practice look like for many domains?
- Probe the URLs that represent revenue, not only the marketing homepage.
- Use more than one region when your audience is not local.
- Route named failures into one Attention queue with the rest of the domain risk.
- Add content checks on paid plans when HTTP 200 has lied before.
Why multi-region matters
Geography disagrees more often than dashboards admit.
Slow vs down
Aepto also tracks slow response against baseline so “technically up” does not hide a site that feels dead.
Named alerts
Portfolio owners need the domain name in the alert, not a generic red tile that forces a scavenger hunt.
Uptime next to the rest of domain risk
Availability is necessary. Alone it is incomplete for domain portfolios.
Catches many host failures. Misses expiry, DNS hijack signals, SSL windows, and “200 but broken” pages.
Uptime plus SSL, Theft Guard, renewals, and optional Content Monitoring in one Attention queue.
Agencies and client-facing calm
- When a client site blinks, uptime alerts start the operator loop.
- A public status page gives clients a URL instead of a stream of screenshots, while Requires Your Attention stays private.
- Paid unlocks webhooks and Content Monitoring when the portfolio or the team channel needs more than inbox email.
Aepto is not a full APM or browser-suite replacement. It is portfolio ops with serious availability checks.
How much downtime does each uptime percentage allow?
The difference between "two nines" and "four nines" is hours versus minutes.
| Uptime | Per month | Per year |
|---|---|---|
| 99% | About 7.3 hours | About 3.65 days |
| 99.5% | About 3.65 hours | About 1.8 days |
| 99.9% | About 44 minutes | About 8.8 hours |
| 99.95% | About 22 minutes | About 4.4 hours |
| 99.99% | About 4.4 minutes | About 53 minutes |
Uptime only measures reachability. A page can be "up" and still show a database error, which is what Content Monitoring is for.
Which URL should you monitor?
Monitor the page that makes money, not just the homepage.
| Site type | Monitor this | Why not only the homepage |
|---|---|---|
| Online store | Checkout or cart | The homepage can be cached while checkout fails |
| SaaS app | Login page or API health endpoint | The marketing site often runs on a different stack |
| Booking or lead site | The form page | A broken form loses leads silently |
| WordPress | A real page, plus Content Monitoring | WordPress errors can still return HTTP 200 |
| API | The health endpoint your clients call | The root URL may never touch the database |
How should you think about uptime targets?
From the people who run some of the largest services.
10×
each extra "nine" of availability is an order-of-magnitude improvement toward 100%
Source: Google SRE book
~44 min
a month of downtime still meets 99.9%
~4.4 min
a month is all 99.99% allows
Common questions
What is uptime monitoring in plain terms?
Automated checks that request your site (or a URL you choose) on a schedule from one or more locations and alert when the response fails availability rules you care about.
Does uptime prove the page works for customers?
Not always. HTTP 200 can still serve a white screen, database error, or broken checkout. That is why Aepto pairs uptime with paid Content Monitoring for body-level failures.
Why multi-region checks?
A single probe can look healthy while another geography fails. Multi-region uptime reduces “works on my ISP” false calm across a portfolio.
Is Aepto only an uptime tool?
No. Uptime is one signal in the Attention queue next to SSL, DNS drift, renewals, and optional Content Monitoring. See Features and Pricing for the full stack.
Where do alerts go?
Email is available on Free. Slack, Discord, Teams, and HTTP webhooks unlock on paid plans when the team needs shared channels.
How often should uptime checks run?
Free checks start from a 10-minute floor. Paid plans can go faster, down to 1-minute intervals on Professional and above, depending on how quickly you need to know.
Why use more than one region?
A single city can miss regional path failures. When Sydney is down and Atlanta is up, multi-region checks show geography instead of a false all-clear.
Availability is the start of the queue.
Add domains free. See uptime next to SSL, DNS, and renewals.