Frequently Asked Questions

VP Watchtower is a free showcase tool from VantagePoint Networks that creates a hosted status page with uptime monitoring in under 5 minutes. It runs HTTP, TCP, DNS, SSL, and SEO checks hourly for 7 days — no billing, no lock-in.

VantagePoint Networks — an independent IT, cybersecurity, and AI consultancy based in London. VP Watchtower is a live proof of the monitoring and infrastructure work we deliver for clients.

Yes, completely free. No payment details, no subscription, no trial expiry. Your status page runs for 7 days and is then automatically deleted. If you need permanent long-term monitoring, contact us at vpnetworks.co.uk and we can build a bespoke solution.

One active page per account. The showcase is capped at 50 active pages at any time to keep the service fast and reliable. If the showcase is full, join the waitlist and you will be notified when a slot opens.

7 days from the time you create it. You receive a reminder email 24 hours before it expires. After deletion, your chosen slug enters a 7-day cool-off period before it can be claimed by someone else.

Up to 8 services per status page. You can mix check types — for example, an HTTP check on your website, a TCP check on your mail server, a DNS check on your domain, an SSL check on your certificate, and an SEO check on your homepage.

Yes. When you create your page you choose the slug that forms your public URL: watchtower.vpnetworks.co.uk/your-slug. Slugs must be 3-48 characters, lowercase alphanumeric with hyphens. Profanity and reserved words are blocked.

Yes. Sign in to your dashboard, click Edit, and you can update your page title, description, theme, and the services you are monitoring. Changes take effect immediately.

Yes. Your public status page includes a subscriber form. Anyone who enters their email will receive a notification when one of your services changes status.

Every hour. Checks run at the top of each hour across all active services on all active status pages. This keeps the showcase sustainable while still giving you meaningful uptime data across your 7-day window.

The HTTP check sends an HTTP GET request to your URL and records the response status code and response time. A 200 OK status means the check passes. Anything else — 404, 500, timeout, redirect loop — fails the check.

The TCP check attempts to open a TCP connection to a specific host and port. If the connection succeeds, the check passes. This is ideal for services that do not speak HTTP: mail servers (SMTP port 25/587), databases (MySQL 3306, PostgreSQL 5432), SSH (22), RDP (3389), and custom application ports.

The DNS check queries a nameserver for an A record on your hostname and verifies it returns a valid IP address. This catches DNS failures caused by lapsed domain renewals, incorrect nameserver delegation, propagation failures after a hosting migration, and CDN provider changes.

The SSL check connects to your host on port 443, completes the TLS handshake, and reads the certificate expiry date. It reports how many days remain on your certificate. Status turns amber when fewer than 14 days remain and red when fewer than 7 days remain.

Every hour, the SEO check fetches your page through the Google PageSpeed Insights API for a real performance score (0-100). It also parses your HTML for a title tag, meta description, H1 heading, and any noindex directives. Score 80+ with all tags and no noindex = green. Score 50-79 or a missing tag = amber. Score below 50, missing title, or noindex detected = red.

Many hosting providers and cloud platforms block ICMP (ping) by default for security reasons. HTTP, TCP, DNS, and SSL checks give you more reliable and actionable uptime signals than ICMP, which can produce false negatives on perfectly healthy servers.

VP Watchtower is a showcase tool, not a production alerting system. Hourly checks are appropriate for demonstrating monitoring capabilities and building uptime history over a 7-day window. For production monitoring with 30-second or 1-minute intervals, VantagePoint Networks can build a bespoke solution for your infrastructure.

Not in the current showcase format. All status pages live at watchtower.vpnetworks.co.uk/your-slug. Custom domain support is available as part of a bespoke monitoring solution — contact us at vpnetworks.co.uk.

Checks are run from Vercel's edge network. If your service requires IP allow-listing, checks from external IPs will fail. TCP checks in particular require the monitored port to be accessible from the public internet. Internal services require monitoring from within your network perimeter.

Checks that do not receive a response within 10 seconds are recorded as a timeout failure. This is consistent across all check types.