Set Up Monitoring in 5 Minutes
Add your first endpoint, choose notification channels, and start receiving real-time uptime alerts — no configuration files required.
Walk Me Through It Read the DocsStep-by-Step Setup
Follow these four steps to get a live monitor up and running. Each step takes under a minute.
1. Create Your First Monitor
Log in to your dashboard and click New Monitor. Enter the URL you want to track — for example, https://api.yourcompany.com/health or https://shop.yourcompany.com. Choose HTTP(S) for web endpoints, TCP for database ports, or Ping for DNS-level checks.
2. Pick a Check Interval
Select how often PingSled probes your endpoint. Free plans support 60-second intervals; Pro and Enterprise plans offer 30-second or 15-second intervals. For a public-facing API, 60 seconds is usually sufficient. For payment gateways or auth services, bump it to 30 seconds.
3. Connect Notification Channels
Go to Settings → Notifications and add at least one channel. Slack works well for teams — paste your incoming webhook URL (e.g., hooks.slack.com/services/T02ABC/B04XYZ/…). You can also add PagerDuty, email, or SMS via Twilio. We recommend pairing Slack for awareness with PagerDuty for on-call escalation.
4. Set Alert Rules
Define when you want to be notified. A safe default: trigger an alert after 2 consecutive failures and resolve after 3 consecutive successes. You can also set response-time thresholds — for instance, alert if your checkout endpoint takes longer than 2 seconds. Save the monitor and you're live.
Watch: Full Walkthrough
Prefer to see it in action? Our 4-minute walkthrough covers monitor creation, notification setup, and your first alert from start to finish.
The video walks through a real scenario: monitoring a Shopify store at https://acme-store.myshopify.com with Slack alerts to the #ops-incidents channel and PagerDuty escalation to the on-call rotation. You'll see exactly where to click and what values to enter. No fluff, no product demos — just the setup process.
Pro Tips for Your First Week
These practices will save you from false alerts and missed incidents during onboarding.
Use Separate Monitors for Separate Concerns
Don't lump your API, storefront, and status page into one monitor. Create individual monitors — api.yourcompany.com, www.yourcompany.com, status.yourcompany.com — so you know exactly which service is down when an alert fires.
Enable Maintenance Windows
Before deploying on Friday afternoon, schedule a maintenance window in Monitors → [Your Monitor] → Maintenance. This suppresses alerts for the duration of your deploy. Set it for 30–60 minutes to cover typical CI/CD pipelines.
Test Alerts Before You Trust Them
After configuring notifications, click Send Test Alert in the notification settings. Verify that your Slack channel receives the message and that your PagerDuty service creates an incident. If the test fails, check your webhook URL and API keys before relying on the channel in production.
Monitor from Multiple Regions
If your users span continents, enable multi-region checking. PingSled probes from Virginia, Frankfurt, and Singapore by default. A monitor that passes in Virginia but times out in Frankfurt tells you about regional routing issues before your customers do.