Getting started with FastPing

Sign up with your name, email address and a password of at least 10 characters, or use Continue with Google. You need to accept the Terms of Service, the Acceptable Use Policy and the Privacy Policy. Product news emails are optional and stay off unless you tick the box.

We then email you a confirmation link, valid for 72 hours. Until you confirm, the dashboard shows a reminder with a Resend email button. Confirming proves that alerts sent to that address will arrive.

Every account starts on the free plan: 3 monitors, checks every 5 minutes, 1 status page and 7 days of history. No payment details are needed.

The sign-up links on the free tools (Monitor it free) and on the pages about each kind of monitoring (Start monitoring free) carry their monitor type into the sign-up. After you sign up, with a password or with Google, you land straight on the form for that type. Until you have a monitor, the page that confirms your email address also links back to that form.

Your account belongs to an organisation. Monitors, alert channels, status pages, API keys and team members all belong to the organisation, and you are its owner. See Team members, roles and seats to invite colleagues.

1. In the dashboard, open Monitors and click New monitor.
2. Pick a monitor type. For a website, choose Website (HTTP) and enter its address. If you leave out the scheme, https:// is added for you.
3. Give it a friendly name. It appears in alerts and on status pages, so "Shop checkout" is more useful than "monitor 3".
4. Choose a check interval. Your plan sets the shortest one. Some types have their own minimum because the thing they measure changes slowly (see How checks work).
5. Under Send alerts to, choose the alert channels for this monitor. On a new monitor every channel is selected.
6. Click Create monitor. The first check runs straight away and the monitor page shows the result, a 24-hour response-time chart and the most recent checks.

With JavaScript on, the monitor page and the Monitors overview update themselves while they are open: states, response times and the time of the last check refresh every 20 to 25 seconds without reloading the page. Updates stop while the browser tab is hidden or animations are paused.

Not sure which type fits? Choosing a monitor type compares them all.

When you sign up, FastPing creates an email alert channel for your own address, so your first monitor can alert you without any setup.

Add more destinations under Alert channels: other email addresses, a Discord webhook, a Slack incoming webhook, a Telegram bot or your own HTTPS endpoint. Use Send test next to a channel to confirm that messages arrive.

Channels are attached per monitor, which lets you route alerts sensibly. For example, send game-server alerts to your community's Discord and website alerts to the on-call engineer's email and Slack.

1. A check fails. FastPing does not alert yet: it checks again 20 seconds later.
2. If the re-check also fails (2 failures in a row), the monitor turns down, an incident is opened and every attached channel receives a down alert with the error, for example HTTP 503 or Timed out after 15s.
3. When a later check succeeds, the incident is closed and you receive a recovery alert that includes the total downtime.

Heartbeat monitors are the exception: they alert as soon as an expected ping is overdue, because their grace period already absorbs short delays. Warnings, such as a certificate that expires soon, are sent once when they start and again when they clear. The details are in How checks, incidents and alerts work.

Create a public status page that lists the monitors you choose with up to 90 days of uptime history, so customers or players can check for themselves before contacting you. Each monitor also has an uptime badge for README files and an embeddable widget: see Uptime badges and status widgets.

• Watch backups and scheduled jobs with heartbeat monitors.
• Check certificates and domain registrations before they expire: SSL/TLS certificate monitors and Domain expiry monitors.
• Invite your team: Team members, roles and seats.
• Automate monitor management with the REST API.
• Need more monitors or faster checks? See Plans, pricing and the plan configurator.