Guides
Long-form, opinionated, evergreen. Written by the StatusPulse team for engineers and ops folks who'd rather read a 2,000-word explanation than a 40-tweet thread.
Compare & choose
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Status pages
Statuspage.io alternatives — honest 2026 comparison
Shortlist of Statuspage.io alternatives ranked by built-in monitoring, pricing at typical-team scale, EU data residency, and migration friction.
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Compliance
GDPR uptime monitoring — what an EU DPA actually requires
Clauses your monitoring DPA needs (Art. 28, sub-processors, Schrems II, retention) and a checklist for picking a vendor that survives SOC 2.
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Probe deep dives
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HTTP probe · Free+
How to monitor a REST API the right way
Why status-code-only checks miss half the failures, and the assertion patterns that catch 200-with-broken-body, slow degradation, and silent contract drift.
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SSL probe · Free+
SSL certificate monitoring beyond expiry alerts
Two-tier expiry warnings, silent CA swaps, weak-crypto downgrades, hostname-mismatch drift — what your "Let's Encrypt auto-renew" doesn't tell you.
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Ping probe · Starter+
When ICMP ping is the right monitor (and when it lies)
Ping is misused as a website-up check. The narrow set of cases where ICMP is the right tool — routers, IoT gateways, bare-metal — and the wider set where it isn't.
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TCP probe · Starter+
TCP port monitoring for non-HTTP services
SSH, SMTP, custom binary protocols, message brokers — port-up doesn't mean app-up. Connect-time thresholds, banner-grab assertions, and TLS-wrap pitfalls.
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DNS probe · Starter+
DNS monitoring — catch propagation lag and hijacks
What records to monitor (A, MX, TXT, CAA), resolver-pinning to catch propagation, and SPF/DMARC drift detection before email starts bouncing.
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Domain probe · Starter+
Domain expiry monitoring — the WHOIS/RDAP playbook
Why renewal autopay still fails, what RDAP/WHOIS expose, two-tier alerting that gives you weeks not hours, and registrar-drift detection.
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Heartbeat probe · Starter+
Cron heartbeat patterns that catch silent failures
Two failure modes you don't catch with exit codes — "ran but did nothing" and "didn't run at all" — and the heartbeat patterns that catch each.
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Email probe · Pro+
SMTP/IMAP round-trip monitoring — prove email actually arrives
Why "port 25 answers" isn't proof. Submit-and-retrieve patterns that prove delivery, plus SPF/DKIM/DMARC alignment checks for silent rejections.
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gRPC probe · Pro+
The gRPC Health Check Protocol, explained
Why HTTP /healthz lies about gRPC. The
Read guide →grpc.health.v1.Healthservice, mTLS, per-service Check, streaming Watch — and the four ways to wire a real check. -
WebSocket probe · Pro+
WebSocket health monitoring beyond TCP checks
TCP-up isn't enough for chat, trading, or collaboration tools. Connect + 101 handshake + ping/pong RTT, subprotocol negotiation, and per-phase timing.
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Database probe · Business
How to monitor a Postgres database without an APM
Connection pool saturation, replication lag, long queries, autovacuum churn — the minimum-viable probe set without paying for Datadog or New Relic.
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Database probe · Business
How to monitor a SQL Server database without an APM
AlwaysOn AG lag, tempdb pressure, blocking chains, SUSPECT databases — the DMV queries that catch what TCP probes on 1433 miss, no agent required.
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