Website Monitoring Checklist for Developers

Before you launch a production application — and periodically thereafter — run through this monitoring checklist. It covers every layer of monitoring a production web application needs, from basic uptime checks to SSL certificates and background job monitoring.

Before Launch: Minimum Viable Monitoring

At bare minimum, set these up before any production launch:

• HTTP uptime monitor on your main domain — 1-minute check interval
• SSL certificate monitor — alerts at 30 days before expiry
• Domain expiry monitor — alerts at 60 days before expiry
• SMS alert configured for downtime (not just email)
• Recovery alert enabled so you know when issues resolve

This takes about 10 minutes to configure and protects you from the most common failure modes. See how to set up uptime monitoring.

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Uptime Monitoring

HTTP Checks

• Main domain monitored (https://yourdomain.com)
• Critical application endpoints monitored (not just homepage)
• API health endpoint monitored (/health or /api/health)
• Content verification enabled (not just status code check)
• Check interval set appropriately (1 min for production, 5 min for staging)
• Multi-location checks enabled (at least 3 locations)
• Confirmation count set to 2 (avoids false alarms from transient blips)

For APIs

• Health endpoint returns 200 with useful JSON ({"status": "ok"})
• Authentication endpoints monitored
• Critical API routes monitored
• Response time threshold configured

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SSL Certificate Monitoring

• SSL certificate monitored for each domain (including subdomains with separate certs)
• Alert at 30 days remaining (email/Slack)
• Alert at 14 days remaining (escalated)
• Alert at 7 days remaining (urgent)
• Auto-renewal verified working (Let's Encrypt, cert-manager, etc.)
• Wildcard certificates accounted for

See the full guide: SSL certificate monitoring

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Domain Registration Monitoring

• Domain expiry monitored for all registered domains
• Alert at 60 days remaining
• Alert at 30 days remaining
• Alert at 14 days remaining
• Auto-renewal enabled at registrar
• Domain lock (clientTransferProhibited) enabled
• Registrant contact information is current

See the full guide: domain expiry monitoring

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Alert Configuration

• SMS alerts for P1/P2 downtime
• Slack alerts for team visibility
• Email alerts for SSL/domain warnings
• Recovery alerts enabled
• Alert routing verified (correct people receiving alerts)
• Alerts tested (deliberately triggered and confirmed received)
• Maintenance windows configured for scheduled deployments
• On-call rotation documented

See the full guide: how to set up downtime alerts

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Background Jobs and Scheduled Tasks

For any cron jobs or background workers:

• Heartbeat monitor configured for each critical cron job
• Heartbeat interval matches cron schedule
• Grace period accounts for expected execution time
• Ping URL added to job script (on successful completion)
• Workers with HTTP ports have external HTTP monitors

See the full guide: how to monitor cron jobs

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Application Health Endpoints

Verify your application has proper health endpoints:

• /health endpoint exists and returns 200
• Liveness check: process alive (fast, lightweight)
• Readiness check: dependencies available (database, cache, external APIs)
• Health endpoints accessible to monitoring service
• Health endpoints not accessible publicly (or rate limited)

For Kubernetes: monitoring Kubernetes pods

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Platform-Specific Checks

For hosted platforms:

• Vercel: deployment monitoring configured
• Netlify: monitoring configured
• Heroku: monitoring configured
• AWS EC2: CloudWatch + external monitoring
• Docker: container health checks configured
• Kubernetes: liveness and readiness probes configured

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Incident Response Readiness

• Incident response runbook documented and accessible
• On-call rotation defined
• Public status page set up
• Status page subscriber notifications configured
• Escalation procedure documented
• Post-mortem process defined

See related guides:

• Incident response plan template
• How to create a public status page

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Periodic Review (Quarterly)

• Verify all monitors are still pointing at correct URLs
• Test alert delivery (deliberately trigger a monitor failure)
• Review false positive rate — adjust confirmation counts if needed
• Update on-call contact information
• Review incident history — any recurring patterns?
• Check new services added since last review
• Confirm monitoring coverage matches current architecture

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Documentation

• Monitoring setup documented in team wiki
• Monitor list and their purpose documented
• Alert routing documented
• Maintenance window procedure documented

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This checklist covers the monitoring needs of most production web applications. Bookmark it, run through it at launch, and revisit quarterly.

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Check off this list using Domain Monitor — uptime, SSL, domain, and heartbeat monitoring in one place.

Related Articles

• Maximizing the efficiency of your website uptime monitoring strategy
• 7 Reasons Why You Need A Website Monitoring Tool
• The role of website uptime monitoring in ensuring customer satisfaction