Frequently asked questions
Everything in one place — getting started, billing, monitors and alerts, status pages, and privacy.
Getting started
How do I create my first monitor?
Sign up, pick a monitor type from the dashboard, and fill in the form. There's no setup wizard — the whole thing takes under a minute.
What can I monitor?
Six things: scheduled jobs that should run on a cadence (cron monitors), URLs that should always respond (uptime monitors), TLS certificates that shouldn't be allowed to quietly expire (SSL monitors), domain registrations that shouldn't be allowed to lapse (domain monitors), raw host:port connectivity for anything that isn't HTTP — mail servers, databases, custom daemons (port monitors), and DNS records that shouldn't change unexpectedly (DNS monitors).
Do I need to install anything?
No. Cron monitors work by calling a ping URL at the end of your job (a single curl line). Uptime, SSL, domain, port, and DNS monitors just need a URL, hostname, domain, host:port, or DNS record — nothing runs on your servers.
Billing & plans
Do I need a credit card to start?
No. The Hobby plan is free forever with no credit card required.
What counts as a "monitor"?
Each cron job, uptime URL, SSL certificate, domain, port, or DNS record you track counts as one monitor. The limit applies to the total across all types.
Can I change plans later?
Yes — upgrade or downgrade at any time. Billing adjusts automatically on your next cycle.
Can I pay annually instead of monthly?
Yes — every paid plan offers an annual option at two months free versus paying monthly. Toggle it in Settings → Billing, or when picking a plan on the pricing page.
What happens if I exceed my monitor limit?
You'll see an error when creating a new monitor and can choose to upgrade. Existing monitors keep running — we never pause them mid-cycle.
Which payment methods do you accept?
All major credit and debit cards via Paddle, which handles global tax compliance so you pay the right tax wherever you are.
Is there a refund policy?
Yes. Contact us within 30 days of any charge and we'll issue a full refund, no questions asked.
Monitors & alerts
How do alerts work?
Add notification channels in Settings — Telegram, email, Slack, webhook, or SMS (paid plans) — then assign them to each monitor. Alerts are capped at 3 per incident by default (configurable per monitor) so a flapping check doesn't spam you; a single alert event counts as one toward the cap regardless of how many channels it fires on. The recovery alert always sends regardless of the cap.
What's the minimum check interval?
5 minutes for uptime, port, and DNS monitors on Hobby, 1 minute on paid plans. SSL certificates and domains are both checked once a day. Cron monitors alert based on your job's own schedule plus a grace period you choose.
Can a port monitor alert me if a port becomes reachable, not just unreachable?
Yes — set its expected state to "closed" instead of the default "open". That flips the check into a security monitor: it alerts if a port that should be firewalled off (a database bound to a public interface, an admin panel, a debug port) unexpectedly starts accepting connections, rather than alerting when a service goes down.
Can I check the response body, not just the status code?
Yes — every uptime monitor, on every plan including Hobby, supports an optional keyword check: require text to be present, or fail if it is. Useful for catching a maintenance page served with a 200 or an error embedded in a JSON response. We search the first 512 KB of the body; it's never stored, only the pass/fail reason.
Can I assert on specific fields in a JSON response, or fail on a slow response?
Yes — uptime monitors support JSON field assertions (e.g. $.status equals ok, with equals/not equals/contains/greater-than/less-than comparators), and the request timeout (1-30 seconds, 10 by default) doubles as your slow-response cutoff: a response that doesn't arrive in time counts as down. All configured checks — accepted status codes, keyword, JSON assertions — must pass for the monitor to be considered up.
Can I mute alerts for a noisy monitor?
Yes — each monitor has its own alert toggle. Muted monitors keep tracking status and history; only notifications are suppressed.
Can I pause checks during planned maintenance?
Yes — schedule a maintenance window covering any combination of monitors. While it's active, those monitors aren't checked at all: no alerts, no incidents, and uptime stats stay untouched. Up to 100 maintenance windows per org, on every plan.
Can I read a monitor's status programmatically?
Yes — generate an API key in Settings and call GET /api/v1/public/monitors/{type}/{id}/status with an X-API-Key header. Keys are read-only for now and rate-limited to 60 requests/minute. Up to 100 active keys per org, on every plan.
Status pages
Do visitors need an account to view my status page?
No. Status pages are public at checkmeup.net/status/your-slug — no login required, nothing for visitors to install.
Can I use a custom domain or subdomain?
Not today, by design — status pages live on the same domain (a path, not a subdomain), so there's no DNS to configure before sharing a link.
What do visitors see during planned maintenance?
Covered monitors show "Under maintenance" with your optional message, instead of up/down — and it doesn't trigger the page's outage banner.
Can I embed my status on my own site or README?
Yes — every status page has embeddable SVG status badges: one for the page's overall status, plus one per monitor on it. Copy the Markdown or HTML snippet from the status page's detail view.
Can I narrate an outage or degradation myself, not just rely on monitor up/down?
Yes — declare an incident from the Incidents page with a title, message, severity, and affected monitors, then post progress updates as status moves from Investigating to Resolved. It shows above the monitor list on the public page and never changes a monitor's own up/down state or triggers alerts.
Can I remove the "Powered by Checkmeup" branding from my status page?
Yes, on Solo and above — each status page has a hide branding toggle in its edit settings that removes the "Powered by Checkmeup" line and FAQ/Terms/Privacy links from the public footer. It's set per page, not account-wide.
How long do resolved incidents stay visible?
90 days, the same window as check history, on every plan — no difference between Hobby and paid. A still-active incident is never removed on a timer, however old it gets; only resolved ones age out.
Is there a limit on how many incidents I can have?
Up to 100 unresolved incidents at once, and up to 100 updates on any single incident, on every plan — resolve an incident or start a new one to free up room. Both are flat safety caps, not a plan allowance, so there's nothing to upgrade past them.
Privacy & security
How is my password stored?
As a bcrypt hash — never in plain text. See the full Privacy Policy for what else we collect and why.
Where is my data hosted?
Application hosting and the database run on Hetzner in Germany, within the EU.
Can I delete my account?
Yes — email us and we'll delete your account, monitors, check history, and status pages. There's no self-service delete button yet.
We use cookies for basic web analytics (page views, traffic sources). No ads, no cross-site tracking.