How checks work
What a check is, where it runs from, and when UptimeCard decides a website is down.
What a check is
At each interval we open the monitored address from one or more places in the world and see whether the website answers properly. The results build the uptime numbers, the 24-hour strip and the history on the monitor's page.
When a website counts as down
One failed check is not enough: networks fail too. Before anything counts, the website must fail from more than one place.
| Plan | Counted as down when | Alert sent when |
|---|---|---|
| Free | 2 of its 3 checks fail (Ohio, then Tokyo and Frankfurt check again) | it counts as down |
| Plus, Innovator | most of the locations that checked say down (a tie counts as up) | it counts as down and at least 3 locations said down |
A website that turns our checker away
Some websites block visitors that are not browsers. The check list then says Turned our checker away (403). That is the website's choice, not an outage of the website for real people. Ask whoever runs it to allow the checker, or watch another page of the site.
The checking locations
| Plan | Locations |
|---|---|
| Free | Ohio, US (double-checked from Tokyo and Frankfurt when a check fails) |
| Plus (6) | Ohio, US · Frankfurt, DE · Singapore, SG · Cape Town, ZA · São Paulo, BR · Sydney, AU |
| Innovator (19) | Ohio, US · São Paulo, BR · Frankfurt, DE · Sydney, AU · Singapore, SG · Cape Town, ZA · Montreal, CA · London, UK · Mumbai, IN · Tokyo, JP · N. California, US · Ireland · Stockholm, SE · Hong Kong, CN · Oregon, US · Paris, FR · Milan, IT · Jakarta, ID · Seoul, KR |
Choose them in Monitor settings. Status pages are different: see the next section.
Status pages are checked differently
- A status page starts in Manual mode: nothing checks it, and it shows the website as working unless you post an incident. Free status pages are always Manual.
- On Plus and Innovator you can switch a status page to automatic: it is then checked every 2 minutes (Plus) or every minute (Innovator), from all 19 locations unless you choose fewer.
- Details: Manual and automatic checks.
Timing worth knowing
- The first check of a new monitor runs within about a minute.
- Each hour is added up a few minutes after it ends (at 9 minutes past the next hour). Until then, the newest hour on a status page can still change.
- “Minutes down” on a monitor's page is the number of failed checks times the interval, so a monitor checked every 5 minutes counts in steps of 5.