HTTP Uptime Monitoring
Know the moment your website stops responding
HTTP uptime monitoring checks your website and APIs every hour, verifying status codes and response content so you find outages before your users do.
Status code verification
Confirm your server returns 200 OK, not a 404, 500, or unexpected redirect.
Response body matching
Optionally check that specific text appears in the response to detect cached error pages that return 200.
Response time tracking
See how long each check takes and spot latency spikes before they become user-visible slowdowns.
Hourly check history
A visual bar of the last 24 checks shows your uptime pattern at a glance on your public status page.
What HTTP monitoring checks
An HTTP check sends an HTTP GET request to your URL and evaluates the response. It records the status code, response time, and optionally validates the response body. A 200 OK with the expected content means the check passes. Anything else — a 500 error, a timeout, a redirect loop, or a response body that no longer contains expected text — triggers a failed check.
When HTTP monitoring catches failures that other tools miss
Reverse proxy misconfigurations sometimes return a 200 status with an error page body — your server is technically responding, but the content is wrong. HTTP body matching catches this. CDN cache poisoning can cause correct-looking responses that serve stale or incorrect content. Response time monitoring catches performance degradation before it reaches the level of a full outage.
Adding HTTP monitoring to your status page
When you add a service to your VP Watchtower status page, select HTTP as the check type and enter the full URL including the protocol (https://). The monitor will run every hour, record the result, and update your public status page automatically. Share your status page URL with clients and include it in your project documentation.
Try HTTP Uptime Monitoring now — free
Create your status page and start monitoring in under 5 minutes. No billing, no lock-in. Live for 7 days.
Create your status page →