SSL certificate checks and new Uptime Monitoring emails

If you feel like we've given you the silent treatment over the last couple of weeks, it's simply because we have been coding all day long. Today, we are ready to introduce the next chapter in elmah.io Uptime Monitoring. Actually, we want to introduce two new features, which are heavily connected.

Uptime Monitoring Emails

Since uptime errors are logged as error messages in your existing logs, notification rules just work. All uptime errors are marked as "New", why the New Error Email, integrations to Slack, etc. will nofify you about downtime. Sending a notification when an endpoint is back up, has only been available through the Mailman app so far.

The Mailman app is basically a nice UI on top of the elmah.io rule engine. While mail rules are cool, they are limited by the fact that you need to set up email addresses again, you don't know the timezone of the receivers of those emails and other disadvantages. What you probably want (at least we did), is a way to tell elmah.io to notify you about all state changes in Uptime Monitoring.

Well now you can! Enable the Uptime Monitoring Email toggle when creating a new log or on your profile:

Enabling the New Error Email will send you an email when new errors are logged (including uptime errors). Enabling the Uptime Monitoring Email will send you emails from elmah.io Uptime Monitoring. Besides an email when the endpoint is down, you will also receive endpoint back up notifications and more (see next section).

SSL Checks

Being able to tell if an endpoint is down, is the core feature of elmah.io Uptime Monitoring. We want to extend on this, to help you identify not only downtime, but also common problems with your domain and configuration. The first part of this new chapter is now available in beta: SSL Checks.

Logging an error when your SSL certificate has expired (or fails in another way), has been available since we launched Uptime Monitoring. As you already know, reacting after the certificate expired is too late. Users starts getting bothered with browser errors (and bounce), Google starts to determine a punishment for your domain and worse. With SSL checks enabled, we automatically check the expiration date of your SSL certificate daily, and warn you when your domain is about to expire.

SSL checks are enabled as part of creating new uptime checks:

A warning is logged daily, from 7 days before expiration. We also log an error if your certificate is not yet valid or expired.

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