Website Checks

Website checks monitor HTTP/HTTPS endpoints by making requests and validating the responses.

Configuration

URL

Enter the full URL including the protocol (e.g., https://example.com). Both HTTP and HTTPS are supported.

Expected Status Code

Set the HTTP status code that indicates a successful response. The default is 200. Common values:

Cache Control

Enable the No Cache option to send a Cache-Control: no-cache header with each request. This ensures you’re testing the origin server rather than a cached response.

Redirect Handling

By default, exit1.dev follows HTTP redirects (301, 302, 307, 308). The final response status code is compared against your expected status code.

If you want to verify that a URL returns a specific redirect code, set the expected status code to the redirect code (e.g., 301) and the system will check the initial response without following the redirect.

How It Works

1. exit1.dev sends an HTTP request to your URL from the configured region
2. The response status code is compared to the expected status code
3. If response validation is configured, the response body is checked
4. If the check fails, a smart verification re-check runs after 30 seconds
5. If the re-check also fails, the check is marked as down and alerts are sent (based on your consecutive failure threshold)

Performance Metrics

Each website check captures detailed timing information:

• DNS Lookup - Time to resolve the domain name
• TCP Connect - Time to establish the TCP connection
• TLS Handshake - Time to complete the SSL/TLS handshake (HTTPS only)
• Time to First Byte (TTFB) - Time until the first byte of the response is received
• Total Response Time - End-to-end request duration

Best Practices

• Use HTTPS URLs whenever possible for accurate SSL monitoring
• Set an appropriate expected status code for each endpoint
• Enable cache control for dynamic content
• Use response validation for critical endpoints to verify response content