Uptrends offers a wide range of monitor types, each targeted to your specific monitoring needs. Every synthetic monitor uses credits to calculate the pricing for different monitoring services.
Transaction monitors
Transaction monitoring, also called web application monitoring, checks that everything on your website works the way users expect it to. Think of it like having a robot visit your site. It opens your pages in Chrome or Microsoft Edge and acts like a real person would: clicking buttons, filling out forms, moving from page to page. You can test simple things such as logging in, or more complex workflows like browsing products, adding items to a cart, and completing a purchase.
In the real world, users don’t just visit one page. They move through multiple steps and navigate through different parts of your system like web servers, databases, APIs, and external services. Transaction monitoring ensures that all these pieces work together properly.
The easiest way to start with transaction monitoring is to use the transaction recorder, a Chrome extension that lets you capture what users do without coding required. It records your screen as you click through your transactions. Once your transactions are successfully recorded, you can save this as a monitor and scripts will be generated from the recording.
For more information, see Transaction monitor overview.
Browser monitors (Full Page Check)
A Browser monitor, also known as a Full Page Check (FPC), completely loads your websites in an actual browser, exactly as your end users would. This includes loading the scripts, CSS, images, third-party elements, and other website components, providing detailed performance data on an element-by-element basis as your end users would experience it.
Browser monitors help you understand the real-world loading experience. If SEO is a priority, these monitors track Core Web Vitals metrics to check how fast your main content appears, how quickly the page responds to clicks, and whether layout shifts occur during loading.
For more information, see Browser monitor overview. To know the difference between basic checks and real browser checks, refer to Basic webpage checks versus real browser checks.
Uptime monitors (Basic checks)
Uptime monitors perform fast, frequent checks to verify that your websites and services are accessible and responding. They test availability, confirm expected content is present, and measure basic response times.
An Uptime monitor checks your page’s availability, expecting a 200 response status code. This monitor only evaluates your website’s initial response and does not load page elements such as scripts, images, or other components.
An uptime monitor checks as often as once per minute, giving a more accurate report of the page’s uptime compared to Browser or Full Page Check monitors.
Types of Uptime monitors
Uptime monitors include the following types:
- Webpage checks — HTTP and HTTPS (recommended over HTTP) monitors
- Advanced checks — DNS, SSL Certificate, SFTP, and FTP monitors
- Mail servers — SMTP, POP3, and IMAP monitors
- Database servers — Microsoft SQL servers and MySQL monitors
- Network checks — Ping and Connect monitors
For more information about uptime monitors and their types, refer to Uptime monitor overview.
API monitors
While transaction monitors test frontend user experience, API monitors focus on backend services and APIs, the invisible layer that powers modern applications. APIs handle communication between different systems and services, making them essential but often hard to monitor since they operate behind the scenes.
An API monitor is a powerful monitor that performs checks on a single-step API call or complex multi-step API calls. This monitor features a no-code (UI-based) solution and custom scripting to test HTTP requests and responses easily while considering your monitoring needs.
You can also add custom logic or user-defined functions, define custom variables, use assertions, and more API-related capabilities.
Types of API monitors
API monitors include the following types:
- Multi-step API (MSA) monitor — the primary API monitoring type with more advanced and powerful features compared to Webservice HTTP and HTTPS monitors.
- Postman API monitor — a monitor that allows you to maximize API checks by running a Postman workspace collection on the Uptrends checkpoint network.
- Webservice HTTP and HTTPS monitors — a classic type of HTTP monitor that only does basic checks on the API’s uptime and availability.
For more information about API monitors, refer to API monitor overview.