Create Monitor

A website monitor makes an HTTP(S) request to a URL on a schedule and verifies the response. Here’s how to create one.

To start, open Monitors → Add monitor and choose Website.

1. Name and URL

• Name — a human-readable label like Marketing site (appears in your dashboard, alerts, and reports).
• URL — the page to check, starting with http:// or https:// (e.g. https://yoursite.com/pricing).

2. Interval and regions

• Check interval — 30 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes, 15 minutes, or 30 minutes (Free plans start at 5 minutes).
• Regions — where checks run from. Spectra confirms DOWN from 2+ regions before alerting. Pick regions close to your users; paid plans let you choose, Free checks from a fixed region.
• Timeout — how long to wait before a check counts as failed (10, 30, or 60 seconds).

3. Assertions (recommended)

Go beyond a status code so a broken page doesn’t pass as healthy:

• Expected status code — default is any 2xx; set a specific code (e.g. 401) for auth-protected routes.
• Keyword check — require text that must (or must not) appear in the body. The monitor goes DOWN even with a 200 if the keyword is missing.
• Redirects — choose whether to follow HTTP redirects or treat them as the final response.
• Custom request headers — add headers such as Authorization: Bearer … for protected pages. Credentials are encrypted and never shown in alerts.

4. Alerts

Attach the alert channels this monitor should notify (Slack and email today), and set how soon to alert after a failure.

5. Save

Click Save. The first check runs immediately and you land on the monitor detail view. Next: set up alerts or learn to edit the monitor.