Beyond Uptime: The Free Website Monitoring Checklist That Actually Protects Users

A green checkmark for “site is up” doesn’t mean the site is usable. Broken SSL, stale DNS, dead links, or a slow edge can hurt you more than a short outage. This checklist is the free, pragmatic way to monitor what users actually feel—and to stop pretending uptime alone is enough.

Start with the basics, then go deeper

• HTTP uptime checks on your core routes with one-minute intervals. Don’t cheap out with five-minute polling; that’s how you miss real incidents.
• SSL monitoring using the free SSL checklist so renewal day is quiet.
• DNS monitoring for apex and CNAMEs—route changes break sites more often than you expect.

Validate content, not just status codes

A 200 OK can still serve garbage. Add content assertions that check for copy, hero assets, or a timestamp. Use mixed-content scanning to catch http:// assets that trigger browser warnings. Monitor the status of key API calls or GraphQL queries referenced on the page; a broken cart API means your “up” site is still losing revenue.

Performance matters

Measure latency from multiple regions and alert on degradation, not just downtime. Pair your probes with the real-time vs 5-minute monitoring guidance to balance signal and noise. Log performance trends to your warehouse using the Exit1.dev CSV export so you can show stakeholders that speed is improving, not just surviving.

Status pages and communication

Users hate silence. Publish a status page that reflects your monitors, not marketing spin. Use the free uptime monitor checklist to list every probe you rely on. During incidents, post updates that say what broke, who’s on it, and when the next update will land. Finish with a link to a short postmortem; honesty beats vague “resolved” banners.

Alerts people actually read

Route alerts to Slack via the free uptime monitor Slack integration and email for redundancy. Keep runbooks handy and rotate on-call. If an alert doesn’t map to a person and a fix, delete it. Alert fatigue is self-inflicted downtime.

Keep it lean and repeatable

Once a month, audit your monitors: retire dead URLs, validate domains, and rotate API tokens. Add new probes when you ship new surfaces—landing pages, API endpoints, checkout steps. The checklist is simple on purpose: cover what users feel, prove it with logs, and keep the noise down. That’s how free monitoring punches above its weight.