FAQ & Troubleshooting
Find answers to common questions and solutions to frequent issues.
Monitor Setup
"A friendly name is required."
Every monitor needs a name. Enter a descriptive name in the Friendly Name field so you and your team can identify it later.
"URL is required." / "URL is invalid."
For HTTP monitors, you must enter a valid URL. Make sure:
- The URL starts with https:// or http://
- For HTTPS monitoring, the URL must match the pattern https://.+
"Hostname is required."
For Ping and Port monitors, enter the target hostname or IP address (e.g., example.com or 1.1.1.1).
"Port is required."
Port monitors need a port number. Enter the port you want to check (e.g., 443 for HTTPS, 25 for SMTP).
"Expected Value is required."
DNS monitors with certain record types require an expected value to validate against the actual DNS response.
"Retries is required."
Set the number of retries (0 to 5) for all monitor types. This controls how many times UptimeObserver re-checks before declaring a failure.
Plan Limits
"Free accounts are limited to 5-minute monitoring intervals."
Free plan users can set monitoring intervals as low as 5 minutes. Upgrade to Indie (1 minute) or Pro (30 seconds) for faster checks.
"Free accounts are limited to 15-second request timeout."
Free plan users have a maximum request timeout of 15 seconds. Paid plans support timeouts up to 5 minutes.
"Free accounts are limited to a single monitoring region."
Free plan users can only select the default monitoring region. Paid plans support multiple regions for redundancy.
"This feature requires a premium plan. Please upgrade your plan."
You're attempting to use a premium-only feature (e.g., Slack integration, SSL monitoring, alert retrigger). Upgrade your plan to access it.
"Indie Plan accounts are limited to 1-minute monitoring intervals."
Indie plan users can set intervals as low as 1 minute. Upgrade to Pro for 30-second intervals.
False Downtime Alerts
If your monitor reports downtime but your site is working:
- Check firewall rules — Your firewall or WAF may be blocking UptimeObserver. See Bot Documentation for our IP addresses to whitelist
- Verify from outside your network — Ensure the URL is accessible from external locations
- Check for geo-restrictions — Your site may be blocking requests from our monitoring regions
- Review rate limiting — Your server may be rate-limiting our monitoring requests, causing intermittent failures
Integration Issues
Slack
Token refresh failures (TOKEN_REFRESH_FAILED status): Re-authorize the Slack integration. Go to Integrations → Slack and click "Add Slack Configuration" to refresh the token.
NOT_INVITED status:
The UptimeObserver bot needs to be invited to your channel. Type /invite @uptimeobserver_bot in the Slack channel.
"No email configurations found. Add an email configuration to receive notifications..." You selected email alerts on a monitor but haven't configured an email integration yet. Go to Integrations → Email and add an email address first.
"No email settings configured yet. Add one in Integrations → Email." This warning appears in the alert type dropdown when no email configuration exists. Add one before assigning email alerts to monitors.
Data Display
"Not enough data. Monitor is new, check back soon"
New monitors need time to collect data before charts and metrics become available. Check back after a few monitoring cycles.
"No incidents to show" / "Great Job! No incidents to show"
Your monitor hasn't experienced any downtime since creation. This is expected for healthy services.
"Some domain extensions do not display expiry dates in WHOIS lookups."
Certain domain TLDs don't expose expiration dates via WHOIS. Domain monitoring may be unable to track expiry for these extensions.
DNS Propagation
DNS changes (such as setting up a custom domain for your status page) can take time to propagate:
- Typical propagation: A few minutes to a few hours
- Maximum: Up to 24 hours globally
- Verification: Use
digornslookupto check if your DNS records have propagated
Cloudflare & Firewalls
Cloudflare warning during HTTPS monitor creation
"If your website is running behind Cloudflare, please make sure to whitelist our IP addresses"
Cloudflare's Bot Fight Mode and other security features can block UptimeObserver's monitoring requests. Whitelist our IP ranges to prevent false downtime reports.
Still need help?
If your issue isn't covered here, reach out using the "Need Help?" button on the bottom right corner or email us at support@uptimeobserver.com.