What is uptime monitoring?
Learn how uptime monitoring works, why it matters for websites and APIs, and how to check availability for free.
Why uptime matters
Uptime is the percentage of time your website or API responds successfully. Even a few minutes of downtime can mean lost sales, broken sign-ups, and angry customers. Monitoring uptime helps you catch outages before your users report them.
How checks work
An uptime monitor sends HTTP requests to your URL on a schedule. If the server returns an error status (4xx/5xx) or does not respond within a timeout, the site is marked as down. Qikot runs checks on demand from the our remote servers — no account required.
What to monitor
Monitor your homepage, login page, checkout flow, API health endpoint, and any critical third-party dependencies. A single URL check takes seconds and gives you immediate HTTP status and response time.
Best practices
Check from outside your network (edge checks simulate real users). Set up a public status page to share with customers during incidents. Pair uptime checks with SSL and domain expiry monitoring so certificate or registration issues do not cause surprise outages.