How to Add a Monitor

Track the availability and performance of websites, APIs, and network services in real time.

Overview

A Monitor is a periodic check that Pinguzo's edge servers run against a URL, hostname, or IP address. When a check fails, Pinguzo opens an incident and notifies your configured contacts. Each monitor records metrics such as response time, uptime percentage, and SSL certificate expiry for historical graphing.

Where checks run Checks are executed from geographically distributed edge servers. When you create a monitor, Pinguzo automatically assigns it to the lowest-latency edge (or you can pick a location manually). Before opening an incident, at least one peer edge independently verifies the failure to prevent false alarms.

Step-by-step: Creating a Monitor

Open the Monitors page

Navigate to Monitors in the left sidebar. The table lists all of your existing monitors with their current status, uptime, and last check time.

Click "Add Monitor"

The button appears in the top-right corner of the Monitors page. A slide-out form or modal will open.

Fill in the monitor details

Complete the fields described in the Field Reference section below. Required fields are marked with an asterisk.

Save

Click Save Monitor. Pinguzo syncs the new monitor to the assigned edge server, which begins checking within seconds. The monitor will show a Pending status until the first check completes, then flip to Up or Down.

Field Reference

Monitor Name *

A short, human-readable label such as "Main Website" or "Payment API — /charge". Names must be unique within your account (1–255 characters).

Monitor Type *

Select the kind of check Pinguzo should perform:

Type	What it checks	Required input
`https`	HTTPS response code + SSL certificate validity and expiry	Full URL (e.g., `https://example.com`)
`http`	HTTP response code (non-TLS)	Full URL (e.g., `http://example.com`)
`ping`	ICMP echo (is the host reachable?)	Hostname or IP address
`port`	TCP port is open and accepting connections	Hostname/IP + port number
`keyword`	Specific text is present in the HTTP response body	URL + keyword string
`dns`	Hostname resolves to at least one IP address	Hostname (e.g., `api.example.com`)

URL / Host *

The target of the check. The expected format changes with the monitor type:

https / http / keyword: full URL including scheme — https://example.com/health
ping / port / dns: bare hostname or IP — db-primary.internal or 203.0.113.5

Port (port type only)

The TCP port number to test. Valid range: 1–65535. Common values: 22 (SSH), 3306 (MySQL), 5432 (PostgreSQL), 6379 (Redis).

Keyword (keyword type only)

The exact string that must appear anywhere in the HTTP response body for the check to be considered Up. Case-sensitive. Example: status":"ok".

Check Interval *

How often Pinguzo runs the check. Choose based on how quickly you need to detect an outage:

Interval	Value (seconds)	Recommended for
Every 1 minute	60	Critical production services
Every 2 minutes	120	High-importance services
Every 5 minutes	300	General websites (default)
Every 10 minutes	600	Background services
Every 30 minutes	1800	Low-priority or infrequently used endpoints
Every 1 hour	3600	Daily health snapshots

Tags (optional)

Comma-separated labels used to group and filter monitors (e.g., production, api, europe). Tags already used in your account appear as autocomplete suggestions. Tags are displayed as color-coded badges in the monitor list.

Monitor Type Deep Dives

HTTPS Monitor

In addition to verifying the HTTP status code (2xx = Up), Pinguzo automatically measures:

SSL certificate expiry — days remaining; triggers an alert when below your configured threshold
DNS resolution time — time taken to resolve the hostname
TCP connection time — time to establish the TCP/TLS handshake
TTFB (Time to First Byte) — time from request sent to first byte received
Total response time — full round-trip duration

Keyword Monitor

Pinguzo fetches the URL and scans the response body for the keyword string. The check is Down if:

The HTTP request fails entirely
The response status code is not 2xx
The keyword is not present in the response body

Tip Use a keyword monitor alongside a basic HTTPS monitor to catch "soft" failures where the page loads (HTTP 200) but the content is wrong — e.g., a maintenance page or a partial database error.

DNS Monitor

Resolves the given hostname from the edge server's resolver. The check fails if the hostname cannot be resolved. This is useful for detecting DNS propagation issues or resolver outages affecting your users.

Monitor Statuses

Status	Meaning
Up	Last check succeeded
Down	Last check failed; an incident is open
Pending	Newly created, awaiting first check result
Paused	Checks are suspended; no incidents will be triggered

Managing Existing Monitors

Edit a Monitor

Click the Edit (pencil) icon on any monitor row. All fields can be updated. Changes sync to the edge server within 30 seconds via the sync queue.

Pause / Resume

Pausing a monitor stops all checks without deleting history. Use this during planned maintenance windows to prevent false incidents. Click the toggle icon on the monitor row to pause, and click again to resume.

Delete a Monitor

Click the Delete (trash) icon. Deleting a monitor removes it from the edge server and permanently deletes all associated metric history.

Irreversible action Deleting a monitor also deletes all historical metric data (response times, uptime logs). Consider pausing instead if you may need the data later.

Bulk Actions

Select multiple monitors using the checkboxes in the monitor list. A toolbar appears at the top with options to Pause, Resume, or Delete all selected monitors at once.

Next Steps

View Monitor Metrics — explore response time charts and uptime history
Configure Alerts — get notified when your monitor goes down
Import / Export Monitors — bulk-create monitors from CSV or JSON