A short guide to uptime monitoring

It comes up on almost every project, usually later than it should. Everything we would tell a client about uptime monitoring in the time it takes to drink a coffee.

The realistic threat for most small businesses is automated and opportunistic, not targeted. The teams that stay on top of it are the ones who put it on a calendar rather than a wish list.

What is actually at stake

You should not learn about downtime from a customer. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding. Budget a little time for it every quarter and it never becomes a project of its own.

How to approach it

Monitor the checkout, not just the homepage. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.

Warning signs

Alerts nobody acts on are just noise. It is worth being explicit about, because assumptions differ quietly. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

How to tell if yours is fine

Security is a maintenance habit rather than a purchase, which is why it drifts. 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

Most of the value here comes from doing the first two things, not all of them.