[1,002 words, 5 minute read time]
One of the first decisions you’ll make when setting up uptime monitoring is uptime check frequency—how often your monitoring service tests your site.
It’s tempting to treat this like a purely technical setting. It isn’t.
Monitoring intervals are a business decision, not a technical one.
They determine how quickly you’ll detect downtime, how noisy your alerts will be, and how much you’ll spend (in plan limits, checks, or ops time).
If you want the full monitoring roadmap beyond intervals, start with the complete guide.
What “interval” means (and the detection delay math)
An interval is the time between checks—for example:
- every 1 minute
- every 5 minutes
- every 10 minutes
This interval sets your detection delay—how long you might be down before you even know.
The simple math
- Best-case detection: almost immediate (if the outage happens right before a check)
- Worst-case detection: roughly equal to your interval
- Average detection: roughly half your interval
Example (the one most people miss):
- If checks are every 5 minutes, worst-case detection is ~5 minutes.
- Average detection is ~2.5 minutes.
And that’s before you add:
- retries/confirmation checks (good practice)
- escalation timing (who gets notified and when)
- time to acknowledge and respond
So a “5-minute monitor” can easily become “10–20 minutes until someone is actively fixing it” if you don’t design alerting well.
If you’re improving alert routing and escalation, see alerts best practices.
1-minute vs 5-minute monitoring: the real tradeoffs
Here’s the practical comparison buyers and agencies care about.
1-minute monitoring (fast detection)
Pros
- Detects real downtime faster (especially short outages)
- Better for revenue-critical sites (SaaS, ecommerce)
- Better for launches, promos, and high-visibility events
- Helps you spot intermittent “flapping” issues sooner
Cons
- Can create more alert noise if your site is occasionally slow
- Consumes plan limits/check quotas faster
- Increases chances of triggering bot protection/rate limits (rare but real)
- Requires better alert hygiene (dedupe, escalation)
5-minute monitoring (solid default)
Pros
- Usually catches meaningful downtime quickly enough
- Lower cost/usage
- Less noise and fewer false alarms
- Easier for small teams to manage
Cons
- Short outages can slip through undetected
- Worst-case detection is ~5 minutes, which may be too slow for revenue events
- Less visibility into “brownouts” (degraded periods)
A practical rule of thumb
- If downtime costs you money quickly, go 1-minute (or tighten during critical windows).
- If you want reliable signal with low noise, start at 5-minute.
Suggested default monitoring intervals by site type
These defaults work well for most teams and can be adjusted as you learn more.
Personal site / portfolio / small blog
- Default: 5–10 minutes
- Why: impact is usually low, and you want fewer alerts.
Content site with ads, affiliates, or newsletter revenue
- Default: 5 minutes
- Tighten to 1 minute during big content launches or email sends.
Lead gen site (bookings, contact forms, paid traffic)
- Default: 5 minutes
- Tighten to 1 minute during campaigns and business hours.
WordPress business site
- Default: 5 minutes
- Tighten during plugin/theme updates or major changes.
SaaS / membership / app with logins
- Default: 1–2 minutes for critical pages (login/dashboard)
- 5 minutes for non-critical marketing pages
- Add response time monitoring as you mature.
Ecommerce
- Default: 1–2 minutes for product/cart/checkout pages
- 5 minutes for non-critical pages
- Tighten to 1 minute during promos, holidays, and sales events.
Agency managing many client sites
- Default baseline: 5 minutes for most sites
- Tiered approach: 1 minute for top-tier clients or revenue-critical pages
- Why: you optimize cost and noise while giving “VIP coverage” where it matters.
When to tighten frequency (launches, campaigns, and change windows)
Even if you run 5-minute monitoring most of the time, you should tighten temporarily when the risk and cost of downtime spike.
Tighten to 1-minute checks when:
- You’re doing a site migration (domain/DNS/hosting changes)
- You’re launching a new product or feature
- You’re running a paid campaign or sending a large email blast
- You’re running a sale (ecommerce) or “open cart” window
- You’re making major infrastructure changes (CDN, WAF, caching)
- You’ve recently had outages and need tighter visibility while stabilizing
Tighten during “change windows”
Most downtime is change-related. If you have a release schedule, consider:
- 1-minute checks during and right after deploys
- normal interval once stability is confirmed
This is one of the easiest ways to improve reliability without paying for ultra-high frequency 24/7.
Avoiding alert noise (so 1-minute checks don’t backfire)
Higher frequency isn’t helpful if it creates alert fatigue. The fix isn’t “monitor less”—it’s “alert smarter.”
Use confirmation logic
Regardless of interval:
- Retries: require 2–3 failures before alerting
- Multi-region confirmation: if possible, confirm from another region
This prevents the classic “one blip woke me up” scenario.
Pick sane timeouts
Too short = noise. Too long = slow detection.
A common starting point:
- Timeout: ~10 seconds
Then adjust based on real baseline performance.
Consider separating “down” vs “slow”
A site can be “up” but sluggish. That’s where response time monitoring helps you catch degradation without treating it like a full outage.
If you want to monitor slowdowns intelligently, see response time monitoring.
Make interval a tier, not a single setting
Many teams do better with a tiered approach:
- 1-minute checks for critical journeys (login/checkout)
- 5-minute checks for everything else
That’s often the sweet spot for cost + signal.
A quick decision framework (choose your interval in 60 seconds)
Ask these two questions:
1) How expensive is 10 minutes of downtime?
If 10 minutes of downtime means:
- lost sales
- wasted ad spend
- angry customers
- support pileups
…lean toward 1-minute monitoring (at least for critical pages).
2) Do you have someone who will act quickly?
If no one is responding quickly (no on-call, no escalation), ultra-fast detection won’t deliver value. Start at 5 minutes, improve alert routing, then tighten.
For the broader monitoring plan beyond interval choices, revisit the complete guide.
Pick a default interval—and define when you’ll temporarily increase it (CTA)
Here’s the simplest action plan:
- Choose a default:
- 5 minutes for most sites
- 1 minute for revenue-critical journeys
- Define “tighten conditions” (write them down):
- launches
- paid campaigns
- sales windows
- migrations
- major deploys
CTA: Pick a default interval today, and define exactly when you’ll temporarily increase it.