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Free Uptime Monitor Checklist: 15 Features You Can't Skip

4 min read•
Morten PradsgaardBy Morten Pradsgaard

Use this free uptime monitor checklist to compare providers before you trust them with your site's reliability.

The Ultimate Free Uptime Monitor Checklist

If you're shopping for a free uptime monitor, stop wasting time on marketing fluff. Run every vendor through this checklist. If they fail even one must-have, cut them loose. Downtime is expensive, excuses are worthless.

  1. Baseline Requirements
  2. Advanced Monitoring Capabilities
  3. Alerting And Incident Response
  4. Governance And Compliance Considerations

Baseline Requirements

These are table stakes. You wouldn't ship code without tests. Don't adopt a free uptime monitor that can't clear this bar.

1. Check Frequency And Locations

  • Sub-minute checks: Anything slower than 60 seconds misses the ugly blips that enrage customers.
  • Global probes: US, EU, APAC. No geodiversity, no deal.
  • Failover logic: Confirmation from a second region before it wakes you up at 3 a.m.

2. Unlimited Monitors (Or A Path To Grow)

  • Baseline: Ten monitors minimum or you can't cover a real product.
  • Better: Unlimited checks even if cadence varies by tier.
  • Bonus: Bulk editing through tags or folders so you aren't stuck clicking like it's 2009.

3. Transparent Data Retention

  • Minimum: 30 days of logs. Anything less is amateur hour.
  • Ideal: A full year for audits and blame-free postmortems.
  • Why it matters: When a VP asks "What happened in Q1?" you need receipts.

4. Protocol Coverage

  • HTTP(S) for the obvious web front.
  • TCP & Ping for services behind the curtain.
  • Cron & Scheduled Tasks because background jobs break more than you'd like to admit.

Advanced Monitoring Capabilities

Once the basics are locked, demand the extras that make a free uptime monitor actually useful as you scale.

5. Content And Keyword Verification

  • Kill "false green" states where the server smiles but the page screams error.
  • Screenshot or DOM checks keep fancy front-ends honest.

6. Transaction Monitoring Light

  • Even a free tier should fake a login or checkout.
  • Two synthetic steps beat zero visibility into revenue paths.

7. API Observability

  • Open REST or GraphQL endpoints with sane rate limits.
  • Webhooks or Zapier support so you can automate without a ransom note.

8. Integrations Marketplace

  • Slack, Teams, PagerDuty. Non-negotiable.
  • Extra credit for Discord, SMS, and raw webhooks when you need custom glue.

Alerting And Incident Response

Monitoring that doesn't alert fast is busywork. Demand decisive incident tooling.

9. Multi-Channel Alerts

  • Email only? That's negligence. Require email plus webhook at minimum.
  • SMS or push options should exist, even if they're throttled.

10. Escalation Policies

  • Different severity, different humans. Make the tool understand shifts and weekends.
  • Calendar-based rotations or bust.

11. Status Page Publishing

  • Built-in status pages save you from another vendor.
  • Custom domains and branding keep customers calm during chaos.

12. Incident Templates

  • Pre-written updates mean you're communicating in minutes, not hours.
  • RSS or webhook broadcast keeps stakeholders looped without manual spam.

Governance And Compliance Considerations

Regulators don't care that it's free. Your free uptime monitor still has to respect compliance.

13. SLA and SLO Tracking

  • Set targets, watch burn rates, export the evidence.
  • Monthly reviews should be a click, not a spreadsheet marathon.

14. Role-Based Access Control

  • Viewer, editor, admin. Anything less invites accidents.
  • Audit logs must track who touched monitors and when.

15. Data Residency And Privacy

  • Know where data lives to stay on the right side of GDPR and SOC 2.
  • Access to DPAs on the free tier shows the vendor isn't hiding behind legalese.

Next Steps

Run your current provider through this free uptime monitor checklist. If they miss two items, stop justifying mediocrity and migrate to Exit1.dev. It ships every requirement without the upsell song and dance.

Morten Pradsgaard is the founder of exit1.dev — the free uptime monitor for people who actually ship. He writes no-bullshit guides on monitoring, reliability, and building software that doesn't crumble under pressure.