Uptime Monitoring Checklist: 12 Steps to Ensure 24/7 Availability
- Published On: September 17, 2025
- Category: Website Monitoring
- Read Time: 4 min
Ensure your website stays online and reliable with this practical 12-step uptime monitoring checklist designed for 2025 and beyond.
Keep your website reliable and your users happy with this practical 12-step checklist. Use it to set clear targets, reduce false alarms, and respond faster to incidents.
Who is this for?
Founders, solo devs, SRE/DevOps, and anyone responsible for website reliability. The steps are tool-agnostic and easy to implement with any monitoring platform.
Quick Summary
- Set your availability target (SLA/SLO)
- Monitor from multiple regions
- Track response time with uptime
- Monitor SSL expiry
- Monitor domain expiry
- Monitor APIs & third-party dependencies
- Cover all layers: DNS, host, app, transactions
- Choose effective alert channels
- Tune alert thresholds
- Create an incident response plan
- Review historical reports & trends
- Publish a status page
1) Set Your Availability Target (SLA/SLO)
Decide whether you aim for 99.9% or 99.99% uptime. Your target drives alert sensitivity, escalation rules, and post-incident reviews.
2) Monitor from Multiple Regions
Single-region checks can create false positives. Run synthetic checks from at least 3 diverse regions and require quorum before paging.
3) Track Response Time Alongside Uptime
Your site can be “up” yet unusably slow. Track response time and latency percentiles. (See also our API Response Time Monitoring Guide.)
4) Monitor SSL Certificate Expiry
Expired certificates block users and cause trust warnings. Learn more in our SSL Certificate Monitoring blog.
5) Monitor Domain Expiry
Domain lapses instantly take everything down. We covered this in detail in Why Domain Expiry Monitoring Matters.
6) Monitor APIs & Third-Party Dependencies
If your payment, auth, or content APIs fail, your app fails. Monitor key third-party endpoints independently.
7) Cover All Layers (Defense in Depth)
- DNS health and propagation
- Network/Host checks
- Application health endpoints
- Synthetic transactions (e.g., login → checkout)
8) Choose Effective Alert Channels
Page where your team responds fastest: Slack, email, SMS, or webhooks.
9) Tune Alert Thresholds & Suppression
Use consecutive failure requirements and maintenance windows to reduce noise.
10) Create an Incident Response Plan
Write a runbook so anyone can act under pressure. Document initial checks, mitigation steps, and communication rules.
11) Review Historical Reports & Trends
Monthly reviews turn incidents into improvements. Spot recurring root causes and measure MTTR.
12) Publish a User-Facing Status Page
Transparency builds trust. See our article on Why You Need a Status Page for more details.
Uptime monitoring is not a one-time setup but an ongoing process. Apply this checklist, review it monthly, and iterate based on incidents and user feedback.
Try Watchman Tower: Set up multi-region checks, SSL/domain expiry alerts, and a status page in minutes—no credit card required.
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FAQ
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