"Traffic Light Tree @ Billingsgate London." by Loco Steve is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 
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What’s in a name?#
When I first created prettygoodping.com, it
didn’t just check SSL/TLS expiration dates and domain name expirations. It
could also ping servers and make HTTP HEAD requests to check URL uptime.
However, I didn’t add the existing ping and HTTP HEAD checks to the
beta accounts. That made for a simpler launch as there were fewer things to go
wrong, but it also made for a more confusing name. PrettyGoodPing didn’t, you
know, ping.
I’ve been beta testing the ping and HEAD checks in my own account for a few months now and I’m happy with them. It’s time to make them more widely available.
Daily Checks vs Frequent Checks#
⏱️ ping and 🚀 HEAD checks will be running about every 5 minutes to start with. In addition to the existing checks, Beta accounts will now also come with:
- 5 ⏱️ ping checks
- 5 🚀 HEAD checks.
This means that you can ping 5 different resources every 5 minutes and make an HTTP request to 5 different URLs every 5 minutes as well. The idea is that in most cases this will be a “pretty good” solution for smaller apps, hobby apps and pet projects. If you need something more robust, there are lots of enterprisey solutions out there which will ping every minute etc. Unlike PrettyGoodPing, they’re not free.
If one of the frequent checks fails, you can get an email – up to 12 emails per incident. You can then expect one subsequent email when the resource is back online.
⏱️ Add a Ping to Your Dashboard#
🚀 Add a HEAD to Your Dashboard#
🌐 See the Results#
Give it a Try#
If you already have a https://www.prettygoodping.com account, feel free to add some ping and HEAD checks to it. Look for the ⏱️ and 🚀 emoji when adding new checks on the configuration page. If you don’t have a free beta account yet, please sign up for the Beta and let me know what you think at GitHub or via support@wundersolutions.com.