On a sale day, you want the promo page to load, the checkout to be reachable and the offer on the page to stay the one you published. OctoPing checks uptime for those pages from 4 vantage points and sends an alert with the cause when a page fails. It works with any storefront reachable by URL, such as Shopify or WooCommerce.
Where peak days go wrong
A traffic spike reaches a host sized for an ordinary week, and pages start returning 502 errors or answering too slowly to use. The certificate on the checkout hostname runs out the week before the sale, and browsers show visitors a full-page warning. The domain registered for the campaign lapses because the vendor who bought it never renewed. Someone puts the sale terms live on the promo page a day early, or rewrites them after the email went out. A nightly product feed export stops, and nothing returns an error because nothing was waiting for it.
Uptime and slow responses on the pages that sell
Add the homepage, the promo page, the category pages and the checkout as sites. A site is one URL, so each page counts on its own. OctoPing's main checker requests each URL at the interval you choose, from 30 seconds to 1 hour, and your plan sets the fastest one:
| Plan | Fastest check | Sites at 30 seconds |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | 1 minute | None |
| Agency | 30 seconds | 15 |
| Scale | 30 seconds | 50 |
A few days before a sale, select the key pages on the Websites page and move them to a faster interval in one bulk action, for up to 100 sites at a time and within the 30-second allowance in the table. Move them back afterwards. When a check fails, a down alert says which locations can still reach the store and names the cause: a timeout, a DNS failure, a refused connection, a TLS error or the HTTP status the server sent. It goes out after the number of failed checks in a row that you set, 3 by default. See multi-region monitoring and the failure reasons page.
A store can also fail by slowing down while it still answers. Set a response-time threshold in milliseconds on the pages that sell, and OctoPing marks the site Degraded when it answers successfully but more slowly than that, then sends a slow-response alert. Response time is the time until the server starts to answer, so OctoPing doesn't measure how long a page takes to render in a browser. See uptime monitoring.
Certificates and domains on the pages that take orders
Every new site has SSL monitoring on, and OctoPing reads the certificate on the hostname of each URL you add, so add the checkout's hostname when it differs from the store's. The warning comes 30 days before expiry by default, and you can choose 1 to 90 days. See SSL certificate monitoring.
Domain monitoring is on for every new site too, and it warns 30 days ahead without needing the registrar login, so a campaign domain that a vendor registered is covered. See domain expiry monitoring.
Text changes on offer pages
The content check compares a page's main text with its last good snapshot and sends the changed lines, with removed lines marked by a minus and added lines by a plus. It reads paragraph text well, so the terms of an offer, the shipping and returns policy and the fine print are good pages to watch. The check leaves out navigation, buttons and footers, and on some storefront and page-builder templates it leaves out headlines and prices too. Content monitoring starts switched off. Before you rely on it for a sale, turn it on for your promo page, change a line of its terms and check that an alert arrives.
Pick pages whose text should hold still, because a server-rendered stock count changes the text whenever stock moves, and each change alerts. OctoPing reads the text the server sends, so a price that a script fills in after the page loads isn't part of the comparison, and OctoPing doesn't compare a page's prices with your product feed. It also follows redirects, so a retired sale URL that redirects to the homepage still reads as up. See website change detection.
Feed jobs and other scheduled work
Point the product feed export, the price sync or the inventory import at a heartbeat. The job requests the heartbeat's secret URL when it finishes, and OctoPing alerts you if no request arrives within the interval you set plus a grace period. The request shows that the job ran, and OctoPing doesn't read the feed file, so chain it after the export with && and a failed export skips the ping. The plans include 20 on Starter, 60 on Agency and 200 on Scale, counted apart from your sites. See cron job monitoring and the guide to monitoring cron jobs with heartbeats.
Planned work during a launch
Schedule a maintenance window for the sites and heartbeats that a migration or a release will take offline. While it runs, down alerts, slow-response alerts and missed-heartbeat alerts are held back and the time stays out of your uptime. A Member can schedule a window of up to 24 hours, and an Admin or Owner up to 7 days. Certificate and domain expiry alerts and text change alerts still send, so a change to a watched page's text during a window still sends a change alert. See maintenance windows.
A status page for customers and your own team
Publish a status page with the storefront, the checkout and the feed jobs, and send customer support to it during an incident. It shows 90 days of history, your incident updates and maintenance running or starting within 7 days. Visitors can follow it by email, and on a paid plan it can use your own hostname, such as status.yourstore.com. A colleague who only needs the alert mail doesn't need a contact: add their address to an email alert rule, which takes as many recipients as you like. See status pages and alerts.
OctoPing requests each URL and reads the response and the page text. Your checkout tests, feed validation and page-speed tools stay in place, because OctoPing doesn't add items to a cart, submit forms, test payments or compare prices against a feed.
Who builds OctoPing
OctoPing is built by Axiolo, which uses it to watch its clients' marketing websites and landing pages. The checks, the client status pages and the monthly summaries are the ones Axiolo relies on for that work.
How it fits the price
Each page you check counts as a site and each scheduled job as a heartbeat. Every plan includes all the checks, unlimited status pages and maintenance windows. Plans start at $19 a month for 20 sites. See pricing for the full list.
Every account starts with a 14-day free trial. No card required. Start your 14-day trial and add your promo page to see it working.
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Related
- FeatureWebsite uptime monitoring with the cause in every alertCheck client sites as often as every 30 seconds, see why a check failed, and flag slow responses as degraded. Planned work stays out of your uptime numbers.
- FeatureWebsite change detection with a diff in every alertWatch a page for text changes and get the changed lines in the alert. OctoPing compares readable text instead of raw HTML to keep false alarms down.
- FeatureCron job monitoring with heartbeat URLs and missed-run alertsGet an alert when a backup, report or scheduled script stops checking in. Add one curl to the job and OctoPing tells you when it goes quiet.
- GuideMonitor cron jobs with heartbeatsGet an alert when a backup or scheduled job stops running, whether it runs from cron, a systemd timer, GitHub Actions or Kubernetes.
- DocsMaintenance windowsSchedule planned work so down alerts are held back and the time stays out of uptime, with the rules for the edges of a window and how it shows on a status page.