A practical checklist for uptime monitoring

Most teams know this matters. Fewer have decided who owns it. Run through this the next time uptime monitoring comes up.

Security is a maintenance habit rather than a purchase, which is why it drifts. It is worth deciding this deliberately rather than inheriting whatever the last person set up.

The checklist

• You should not learn about downtime from a customer
• Monitor the checkout, not just the homepage
• Alerts nobody acts on are just noise
• Someone is named as the owner
• There is a date to review it again

Why this earns attention

You should not learn about downtime from a customer. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. It is worth deciding this deliberately rather than inheriting whatever the last person set up.

In practice

The realistic threat for most small businesses is automated and opportunistic, not targeted. Three things worth confirming about uptime monitoring before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• You should not learn about downtime from a customer — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Worth checking on your own setup before it becomes someone else's problem to fix.