Monitoring

Every uptime monitoring feature, on every plan.

Most teams don't need another observability platform. They need a dependable answer to a small number of questions about a small number of things. That is what BinaryCanary is for.

Capabilities

Website monitoring, email server monitoring, and server monitoring — all included.

All paid plans include all uptime-monitoring features. Here is what that covers.

Website and URL monitoring

  • Web pages over HTTP and HTTPS, one page or many
  • Text found / not found, plus unlimited regular expressions
  • Page size match, minimum and maximum size, and MD5 checksum
  • Password-protected pages and cookies
  • Follows up to five 301 or 302 redirects
  • SSL certificate expiry, domain name expiry, and DNS entry checks

Email server monitoring

  • SMTP, POP3, and IMAP server monitoring
  • Round-trip email: SMTP > POP3 and SMTP > IMAP, confirming a message is sent and received
  • Secure (SSL) email servers
  • Custom port, timeout, username, and password per monitor

Database and server monitoring

  • SQL Server, MySQL, and PostgreSQL database servers
  • FTP server monitoring, including user logins
  • Ping and IP address monitoring

Router, telnet, and custom-port monitoring

  • Router monitoring
  • Telnet monitor on any custom TCP port, checking for a “ready string”
  • Monitor scientific instruments, security systems, or any other networked device

Hacker and defacement detection

  • Alerts on unauthorized changes to your website that may signal a defacement attack
  • DNS entry checks that help prevent certain hacker attacks

Alerts, escalation, and notifications

  • No false alarms: every failure confirmed by a second monitoring node
  • Unlimited escalation profiles, shared across monitors
  • Alert acknowledgement, so one response stops further alerts
  • Do-not-disturb periods for each contact
  • Email, SMS, SMS by email, and phone call (Hyper) notifications
  • Local time zones for each user

Uptime reports and dashboard

  • Graphical executive dashboard
  • 1 year of detailed history for each monitor
  • Failure and notification reports, and performance comparison
  • Public uptime reports you can display on your website
  • Network status is also available through our API

Teams, maintenance, and control

  • 1-minute checks, adjustable up to 60 minutes per monitor
  • Group monitors by server, with maintenance schedules and pausing
  • Unlimited user accounts with per-user access levels
  • Sub-accounts to separate monitors by client

Monitoring network

Independent confirmation before an alert.

If one of our monitoring nodes detects an error, it requests confirmation from a separate node on a different network. Only if both report the error is an alert sent — so a temporary network problem beyond your control doesn't become a false alarm.

Monitoring locations include

  • California
  • Oregon
  • Virginia
  • Ireland

The design brief

Built to be boring in the right places.

Monitoring tools tend to grow in two directions at once: more to configure, and more to interpret. Both quietly increase the chance that nobody is really watching.

  • Setup that a team can complete without a dedicated rollout project.
  • A view a new engineer can read correctly on their first on-call shift.
  • Behaviour that stays predictable, because a monitoring service you second-guess is one you've already stopped using.
  • Published plans that make the relationship between monitor locations and price visible before you sign up.

Common questions

Straight answers.

Who is BinaryCanary for?

Teams who run a website and the servers behind it, and who want to know about a problem without adopting a monitoring platform to find out. It suits small engineering teams, agencies looking after client sites, and operations teams who want one dependable signal rather than another dashboard to maintain.

What does BinaryCanary monitor?

Websites (HTTP and HTTPS), email servers including round-trip email, databases, FTP, DNS, domains, SSL certificates, ping, routers, and any device on a custom port. See the full list above, or the FAQ for more detail.

What does it cost?

Four plans, from $2 to $20 a month in USD, with every uptime-monitoring feature on every paid plan. See Pricing for what each plan includes and the 14-day free trial.

Next step

Put the things you depend on under watch.

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