How SystemOK Works
A comprehensive guide to understanding how SystemOK keeps your services online with 24/7 monitoring, intelligent alerts, and powerful management tools
What is SystemOK?
Enterprise-grade uptime monitoring made simple and accessible
SystemOK is a comprehensive uptime monitoring service that continuously checks your websites, APIs, servers, and services from multiple global locations. When something goes wrong, you're notified instantly through your preferred channels—email, Slack, SMS, or custom webhooks.
Unlike basic ping services, SystemOK offers intelligent features like dependency management to reduce alert fatigue, customizable status pages for customer transparency, and private monitoring for infrastructure behind firewalls.
Monitoring Uptime
Check Intervals
Global Locations
Monitoring
How Uptime Monitoring Works
Understanding the monitoring lifecycle from check to alert
You Create a Monitor
Set up a monitor by providing the URL, IP address, or server you want to track. Choose from multiple monitor types: HTTP/HTTPS for websites and APIs, Ping for server availability, Port monitoring for specific services, or Keyword monitoring to verify page content.
Monitor Configuration Options:
- HTTP/HTTPS URL monitoring
- Ping (ICMP) availability checks
- Custom port monitoring
- Keyword/content verification
- Response time thresholds
- Custom check intervals (1-60 min)
Global Nodes Perform Checks
Our distributed network of monitoring nodes located in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand simultaneously check your service at your configured interval. Each node operates independently, testing accessibility from different geographic locations.
United States
North America coverage
Sydney
Asia-Pacific region
Auckland
Oceania monitoring
Smart Quorum Verification
Before triggering an alert, SystemOK uses intelligent quorum verification to prevent false alarms. Multiple nodes must agree that your service is down before you're notified. This eliminates alerts caused by temporary network hiccups or single node issues.
How Quorum Works:
If 1 node reports failure → SystemOK waits for confirmation
If majority of nodes confirm failure → Alert is triggered
Reduces false positives by 95% compared to single-node monitoring
Instant Notifications Sent
Once an incident is confirmed, you receive instant notifications through all your configured channels. Alerts include detailed information: what failed, when it failed, error messages, and direct links to view full incident details.
Email Alerts
HTML-formatted emails with full incident details
Slack Integration
Rich messages directly to your team channels
SMS Notifications
Critical alerts sent to mobile devices
Custom Webhooks
Integrate with any tool via HTTP callbacks
Continuous Monitoring & Recovery Detection
Monitoring continues even during incidents. When your service recovers, SystemOK automatically detects it and sends recovery notifications. All incident data is logged including downtime duration, affected services, and resolution time for comprehensive reporting.
Incident Lifecycle:
Operational
Incident Detected
You Resolve
Auto-Recovery
Advanced Monitoring Features
Powerful tools that set SystemOK apart
Smart Dependency Management
Define parent-child relationships between monitors to prevent alert storms. When a parent monitor (like a router or host server) goes down, SystemOK automatically suppresses alerts for dependent child monitors.
Benefits:
- Reduce alert fatigue by 90% during infrastructure failures
- Identify root cause instantly with visual dependency trees
- Focus on fixing the real problem, not triaging hundreds of alerts
Example Hierarchy:
Result: 1 alert instead of 4 separate notifications
Status Page Features:
- Public or password-protected pages
- Custom branding with logo and colors
- Historical uptime visualization
- Automatic incident updates
- Subscribe to notifications via email, Slack, SMS, RSS
- Embeddable widget for your website
Public Status Pages
Build customer trust with transparent status pages. Show real-time uptime status, historical performance, and incident information. Reduce support tickets by up to 50% during outages by giving customers a single source of truth.
Create unlimited status pages for different audiences: public pages for customers, private pages for internal teams, or client-specific pages for enterprise customers.
Learn more about Status PagesPrivate Monitoring Solutions
Monitor internal infrastructure behind firewalls without compromising security. Deploy our lightweight monitoring agent as a Docker container or Kubernetes deployment within your private network.
What You Can Monitor:
- Internal databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis)
- Private APIs and microservices
- Internal web servers and admin panels
- Network services and custom ports
How It Works:
Deploy Agent
Install Docker container inside your network
Configure Monitors
Set up checks via SystemOK dashboard
Secure Reporting
Encrypted status updates to SystemOK
Getting Started with SystemOK
Start monitoring in less than 5 minutes
1. Create Account
Sign up for free and get instant access to 5 monitors. No credit card required. Set up your account in under 60 seconds.
2. Add Monitors
Add your websites, APIs, or servers. Choose check type, frequency, and notification preferences. Set up dependencies if needed.
3. Start Monitoring
That's it! Monitoring begins immediately. View real-time status, configure alerts, and create status pages as needed.
No credit card • 5 free monitors forever • Upgrade anytime
Technical Specifications
Enterprise-grade infrastructure and capabilities
Monitoring Capabilities
Protocol Support:
- • HTTP/HTTPS (including custom headers)
- • ICMP Ping
- • TCP/UDP Port monitoring
- • Keyword/content verification
Check Frequencies:
- • 1 minute (premium)
- • 5 minutes (free tier)
- • Custom intervals up to 60 minutes
Advanced Features:
- • SSL certificate expiration monitoring
- • Response time threshold alerts
- • Custom HTTP headers and authentication
- • Expected status code validation
Infrastructure & Reliability
Global Network:
- • 3+ monitoring locations worldwide
- • Redundant node infrastructure
- • 99.99% monitoring network uptime
- • Automatic failover between nodes
Data & Security:
- • 90-day data retention (premium)
- • TLS encryption for all communications
- • Secure credential storage
- • SOC 2 compliant infrastructure
API & Integrations:
- • Full RESTful API access
- • Webhook notifications with custom payloads
- • Slack, PagerDuty, Discord integrations
- • Comprehensive API documentation
Notification System
Notification Channels:
- • Email (HTML formatted, unlimited)
- • Slack (channel or DM)
- • SMS (pay-per-use, $0.10/message)
- • Webhooks (custom HTTP callbacks)
- • RSS feeds per status page
Alert Customization:
- • Per-monitor notification settings
- • Alert delay configuration
- • Recovery notification options
- • Dependency-based suppression
Reporting & Analytics
Available Metrics:
- • Uptime percentage over time
- • Response time graphs and trends
- • Incident frequency and duration
- • MTTR (Mean Time To Recovery)
- • SLA compliance reporting
Data Export:
- • CSV export of historical data
- • API access to all metrics
- • Incident history downloads
Who Uses SystemOK?
Trusted by businesses of all sizes
SaaS Companies
Monitor application uptime, API availability, and database performance. Create public status pages to build customer trust and reduce support load during incidents.
E-commerce
Ensure your online store, payment gateway, and inventory systems are always accessible. Monitor checkout flows and third-party integrations.
IT Departments
Monitor internal infrastructure, employee-facing applications, and critical network services. Use private monitoring for systems behind firewalls.
Developers & Agencies
Monitor client websites and applications. Provide branded status pages showing uptime. Catch issues before clients do.
Healthcare & Critical Services
Ensure patient portals, telehealth platforms, and critical systems maintain high availability. SMS alerts for urgent incidents.
Educational Institutions
Monitor learning management systems, student portals, and administrative platforms. Ensure 24/7 access during critical periods.
Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know about how SystemOK works
How quickly does SystemOK detect outages?
Detection speed depends on your check interval. Premium users with 1-minute checks will detect outages within 60-120 seconds. Free tier users with 5-minute checks will detect within 5-10 minutes. Our quorum system adds a brief verification period to prevent false alerts.
What happens if a monitoring node goes offline?
Our distributed architecture ensures continuous monitoring. If one node goes offline, other nodes continue checking your services. The quorum system requires multiple nodes to confirm an outage, so a single node failure won't affect your monitoring or trigger false alerts.
Can I monitor services that require authentication?
Yes! SystemOK supports HTTP Basic Authentication, custom headers (including Authorization tokens), and can verify keyword presence after login. For complex authentication flows, use our webhook monitoring to check endpoints that your own systems validate.
How does private monitoring work behind firewalls?
Our monitoring agent runs inside your network as a lightweight Docker container. It initiates outbound HTTPS connections to SystemOK, so no inbound firewall rules are needed. The agent performs health checks locally and reports encrypted results back to our platform.
What's included in the free plan?
The free plan includes 5 monitors permanently at no cost, 5-minute check intervals, email notifications, basic API access, and 7-day data retention. It's perfect for personal projects or small businesses just getting started with uptime monitoring.
Can I integrate SystemOK with my existing tools?
Absolutely! SystemOK offers webhooks that can integrate with any system, built-in Slack integration, and a comprehensive REST API. Connect with PagerDuty, Discord, Microsoft Teams, or any tool that accepts HTTP callbacks. Our API allows full programmatic control of monitors and alerts.
How does dependency management reduce alerts?
When you define a monitor as a parent (e.g., a router), you can link child monitors (e.g., servers behind it) with notification suppression enabled. If the parent goes down, child alerts are automatically suppressed since the root cause is known. This prevents alert storms and helps you focus on fixing the actual problem.
What's the difference between keyword and HTTP monitoring?
HTTP monitoring checks if your website/API is accessible and returns the expected status code. Keyword monitoring goes further by downloading the page content and verifying specific text is present. Use keyword monitoring to detect issues like database errors, wrong content being served, or silent failures that still return HTTP 200.
How long is monitoring data retained?
Free tier accounts retain 7 days of data. Premium users get 90 days of retention. This includes uptime statistics, response time graphs, and incident history. You can export data at any time via CSV or API for longer-term archival.
Can I monitor from specific geographic locations?
All monitors automatically check from our global network of nodes in the US, Australia, and New Zealand. This provides geographic redundancy and helps detect regional outages. The quorum system uses results from all locations to determine if your service is truly down.
Ready to Start Monitoring?
Join thousands of businesses using SystemOK to keep their services online 24/7
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