How monitoring works

Choose a check, then enter the target, such as a domain or a URL. The form selects the check's starred assertions for you. You can change the selection before saving or later on the monitor's page.

Each monitor has its own schedule. Default scan schedule: hourly. Scans can run hourly on Pro, every 30 minutes on Team and every 15 minutes on Business.

The first scan alerts on failing selected assertions. If your site already fails a selected assertion, you get an alert after the first scan.

Some assertions compare a scan with values you saved, such as the contacts in your security.txt. Until you save them, the monitor shows Needs a pin. Pin current values saves the values from the latest scan.

Monitors lists each monitor once, under the first matching condition. The order is Failing, Can't scan, Needs a pin, To review, Paused, Waiting for first scan and Passing.

We compare each scan with the monitor's stored reading. When something differs, the monitor records a change with the date and the values before and after.

A change that makes a selected assertion fail or pass again raises an alert. Other changes are recorded without an alert under All changes. To get alerts for those changes too, select Alert on every change on the monitor. Routine changes, such as a certificate's expiry drawing closer, still don't trigger alerts.

A change nobody has acknowledged puts its monitor under To review. Review lists those changes, newest first. Acknowledge marks them as seen and takes the monitor out of To review.

When a change breaks a value you saved and the new value is right, Pin new value saves what the scan reads now and acknowledges the change in one step. Acknowledge alone leaves the monitor under Failing until the saved value returns.