How to Monitor Static Sites on Netlify, Gatsby, Hugo, and Cloudflare Pages With a Free Uptime Monitor

Static hosting is sold as “set it and forget it.” Reality: CDNs cache the wrong thing, deploy hooks choke, DNS propagation drifts, and you end up debugging a 404 behind a shiny status page. You need a free uptime monitor that mirrors how Jamstack actually fails, not a checkbox ping that fires once an hour.

Map every surface your visitors touch

Start with a coverage map. If a user can hit it, you monitor it. Track the apex, www, and any vanity or campaign domains with the Free Website Monitor so a lazy DNS change doesn’t silently break the funnel. Point probes at the primary HTML route plus a critical asset (CSS or hero image) to detect half-baked deploys that return 200 but ship broken bundles. Deploying globally? Run probes from every region Exit1.dev offers so you see the truth from São Paulo to Singapore, not just from one cozy data center.

Pair the uptime checks with an SSL monitor and the free SSL checklist. Static sites die just as easily from an expired cert as from a bad build. Treat cert expiry as downtime—you’ll earn back more weekends than you think.

Netlify-specific guardrails that save launches

Netlify’s pipeline is fast until it isn’t. Keep a 1-minute free uptime monitor with tight timeouts; slow edge middleware often surfaces as a random 500. Add a simple header assertion on your redirects so you catch loops the second a rule regresses. Ship alerts to the front-end crew via the free uptime monitor Slack integration—marketing should never be the first to spot a broken landing page.

Gatsby and Hugo: don’t trust the happy path

Preview builds love to rot. Monitor previews just like production or you’ll publish bad bundles next week. Enable mixed-content checks; static generators make it too easy to sneak in absolute HTTP assets. After each deploy, ping /index.html and log the latency. Combine that data with the real-time vs 5-minute monitoring guidance to avoid chasing noise while still catching real slowdowns.

Cloudflare Pages and edge hosts

Edge functions are fantastic until cold starts slap you. Add a synthetic check that warms them every five minutes and alerts if latency spikes. Run a second monitor from outside Cloudflare’s network to expose routing loops and DNSSEC misfires. Pipe failures to your warehouse with the Exit1.dev CSV export so you can show stakeholders exactly when and where the edge flinched.

Publish the truth with a status page

A status page is your public memory. Reuse the free uptime monitor checklist to make sure every probe shows up with honest history. Add a “last deploy hash” to the footer so you can connect downtime to a commit without playing detective. The goal is boring transparency: when something breaks, you already know which lever to pull.

The lean Jamstack monitoring stack

1. HTTP checks on the main route and one critical asset per domain.
2. SSL monitor so renewal day is uneventful.
3. DNS coverage on apex and CNAMEs.
4. Global probes at 1-minute intervals—five minutes is for tourists.
5. Slack and email alerts wired to a real rotation, not an abandoned inbox.

Static sites are supposed to be the simple part of your architecture. Make the monitoring just as disciplined: free, fast, and brutally clear. That’s how you keep the Jamstack promise without pretending CDN magic makes you invincible.