Using CIS Monitor.

🚀 Getting started

What CIS Monitor does

CIS Monitor watches your websites, apps, and servers around the clock and tells you the moment something breaks — checked from multiple locations so you're not woken up by a false alarm. When something is wrong, it shows you exactly where (DNS, connection, TLS, server response), and it warns you before your SSL certificate or domain expires.

Signing in

CIS Monitor uses passwordless sign-in — there's no password to remember.

1. Go to your CIS Monitor URL and enter your email address.
2. We email you a one-time code.
3. Enter the code, and you're in.

If you don't receive a code, check spam, confirm you're using the email your account was set up with, and make sure your administrator has added you.

A quick tour of the dashboard

• Status cards at the top: total monitors, and how many are Online, Down, in Maintenance, or Paused. Click any card to filter.
• Monitor cards: each site/host you're watching, with its current status, uptime, and recent response time. Drag to reorder; pin your most important ones.
• Recent Incidents: a running log of outages, newest first.
• A Live indicator (top bar) shows the dashboard is updating in real time.

🖥️ Monitors

A monitor is one thing you want to watch — a website, an API, a server, a port.

Monitor types

• HTTP / HTTPS — websites and APIs. Checks the response and measures the full request timing.
• Ping (ICMP) — is a host reachable on the network.
• TCP port — is a specific port open (e.g., a database or mail server).
• SMTP / SSH / DNS — service-specific checks (banner / resolver responses).

Adding a monitor

1. Click Add Monitor (top right).
2. Pick the type, give it a name, and enter the URL or host.
3. Set the check interval (how often we test it) and timeout.
4. Choose whether to send alerts, and after how many consecutive failures.
5. (HTTP, Pro) Optionally turn on Domain Intelligence and Degradation Alerts.
6. Save — the first check runs immediately.

Editing, pausing, deleting

Open a monitor (or use the buttons on its card) to Edit, run a Check now, Pause/Resume, or Delete it. Pausing keeps the monitor and its history but stops checking and alerting — handy during planned work.

Statuses at a glance

• 🟢 Up — responding normally.
• 🔴 Down — failing checks (an incident opens after your "alert after N failures" threshold).
• 🟣 Maintenance — inside a maintenance window; alerts suppressed.
• 🟡 Paused — checking is off.

🔔 Alerts & notifications

Alerts tell you when a monitor goes down (and when it recovers).

Setting up an alert channel

An alert channel is how CIS Monitor reaches you — by email, or by posting to a chat tool. You set one up once, then any monitor can use it.

1. Go to Alert Channels → Add Channel.
2. Give the channel a Name you'll recognize (e.g. "Ops email", "#alerts Slack").
3. Choose a type — Email (all plans), or Slack / Google Chat / Webhook (Pro) — and fill in its fields (below).
4. (Optional) Set the monitor scope: have this channel notify All monitors, or only specific ones.
5. Save. Then click Test on the channel to send a sample alert and confirm it arrives before relying on it.

📧 Email — what you need

Email alerts are sent through your own mail server (SMTP), so they always come from your domain and never hit a shared sending limit. Have these ready:

💬 Slack (Pro) — what you need

A Slack Incoming Webhook URL (looks like https://hooks.slack.com/services/…).

1. In Slack, open Apps and add Incoming WebHooks (or create a Slack app with Incoming Webhooks enabled).
2. Choose the channel alerts should post to and Add.
3. Copy the generated Webhook URL and paste it into CIS Monitor.

💬 Google Chat (Pro) — what you need

A Google Chat Webhook URL (looks like https://chat.googleapis.com/v1/spaces/…/messages?key=…).

1. Open the Google Chat space where alerts should land.
2. Space name → Apps & integrations → Webhooks → Add webhook.
3. Name it (e.g. "CIS Monitor"), Save, and copy the Webhook URL into CIS Monitor.

🔗 Webhook (Pro) — what you need

For wiring alerts into your own systems (PagerDuty, Opsgenie, an internal endpoint, automation, etc.).

• Endpoint URL — where CIS Monitor should POST the alert (e.g. https://your-api.example.com/hooks/monitor).
• Custom Headers (optional) — JSON, for auth or routing, e.g. {"Authorization":"Bearer your-token"}.

CIS Monitor sends a JSON payload describing the monitor, the new status (down/up), and when it changed.

Controlling who gets paged

• Alert after N failures — avoid noise from one-off blips by alerting only after 2–3 consecutive failures.
• Per-monitor channel scoping — a monitor can notify all channels or only specific ones.
• Email recipients override — send a particular monitor's emails to a different address.
• Dependencies — if a monitor "depends on" a parent, alerts are suppressed when the parent is down (so one outage doesn't page you ten times).

🔍 Reading a monitor

Click a monitor to open its detail page:

• Uptime over 24 hours and 30 days.
• Response-time chart — trend over 1h / 12h / 24h / 7d, with brush-to-zoom.
• Timing breakdown (HTTP) — DNS → TCP connect → TLS handshake → time-to-first-byte → transfer, so you can see where it's slow.
• 30-day uptime calendar — green/amber/red per day.
• Incidents — every outage for this monitor (the Incidents stat is clickable and filters the Incidents page to just this monitor).
• Domain Intelligence (Pro) — SSL, registrar/expiry, DNS, and MX details.

🛠️ Maintenance windows

Planning work that will take a site offline? Create a maintenance window so it doesn't trigger alerts or count against uptime.

1. Go to Maintenance → Add Window.
2. Set the name, scope (all monitors, or by tag/monitor), and start/end times.

Monitors in an active window show as 🟣 Maintenance, and downtime during the window is excluded from uptime.

⭐ Pro features

Smart degradation alerts

Instead of guessing a threshold, each monitor can learn its own normal response time (a p50/p95 baseline over the last 14 days of healthy checks) and alert only on a real slowdown. It ignores one-off spikes, warms up before arming, and freezes the baseline during an active slowdown so a regression can't quietly become the "new normal." Manual fixed thresholds are also available if you prefer.

Domain Intelligence

Weekly checks that catch the silent killers before they cause downtime:

• SSL certificate — issuer, expiry, and SANs.
• Registrar & expiry — domain registration details via RDAP.
• DNS nameservers and MX records.

Scheduled reports

Get uptime/incident summaries emailed on a schedule (daily/weekly/monthly) to a person or an alert channel.

👥 Your team (roles)

Account owners and admins can invite teammates. Each login has a role:

❓ FAQ & troubleshooting

I'm not receiving the sign-in code.

Check your spam folder, confirm you're entering the exact email your account uses, and make sure your administrator has added you. Codes expire after a few minutes — request a fresh one if needed.

My "send alerts" toggle is disabled when adding a monitor.

You need at least one alert channel first. Add one under Alert Channels, then the toggle becomes available.

I'm getting paged for a site that wasn't really down.

Increase Alert after N failures (e.g., to 2–3 consecutive failures) so transient blips don't page you. On Pro, multi-location checks also cross-validate before alerting.

Why can't I see Domain Intelligence / Smart degradation / Scheduled reports?

Those are Pro features. On Free you'll see an "upgrade to enable" note where they'd appear.

Planned downtime — how do I avoid alerts?

Create a maintenance window for the affected monitors. Alerts are suppressed and the downtime won't count against uptime.

Can I use it on my phone?

Yes — CIS Monitor is mobile-friendly and can be added to your home screen as an app (PWA).