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Database server drops off
The application server is fine, but the database host stopped answering. Every request now times out and you find out from an angry customer.
TCP Ping monitor
PulseStack opens a TCP connection to your server on a schedule, confirms it is reachable and measures how long the handshake takes. When it stops answering, you hear about it before your customers do.
Ping monitoring is on Starter and up, from £9 a month with a 14-day trial.
Live TCP connection attempt - exactly what PulseStack does on every check.
Ping monitoring watches the layer beneath your website. When the box itself falls off the network, there is no 500 to catch and no log line to read. Here is what that silence tends to cost.
The application server is fine, but the database host stopped answering. Every request now times out and you find out from an angry customer.
A routine patch reboot hangs on boot. The host is powered on in the console but unreachable on the network for hours.
A well meaning change locks the port shut. Traffic silently stops flowing and nothing in your app logs explains why.
Your host is healthy, but a routing problem at the data centre makes it unreachable from the outside world.
No agent to install and nothing to run on your server. Point PulseStack at a host and it starts checking from multiple locations.
Enter a hostname or IP address and the TCP port you want to watch (port 80 by default).
Check as often as every 60 seconds on Starter, or every 30 seconds on Pro, Team and Enterprise.
A failed check is re-tested a few seconds later and must fail from at least two locations, so a single blip stays quiet.
Route failures and recoveries to email, Slack, Teams, PagerDuty and more.
Add your first host and watch it answer in real time.
Every cycle, PulseStack attempts a TCP connection to the host and port you chose. If the handshake completes, the host is reachable and we record the response time. If it fails or times out, the check is re-tested a few seconds later, and the monitor is marked down when at least two locations fail.
> connect db-primary.example.com:5432
reachable response 12 ms ok
> connect db-primary.example.com:5432
reachable response 11 ms ok
> connect db-primary.example.com:5432
timeout re-testing warn
> connect db-primary.example.com:5432
timeout 2 of 3 locations DOWN
alert -> email, slack, pagerduty
> connect db-primary.example.com:5432
reachable response 13 ms RECOVERED
alert -> recovery notice sentOne monitor type, the full PulseStack toolkit around it. No feature gate on the essentials.
Mix and match everything under one login, including SSL certificate, DNS record and domain expiry monitors. Ping proves the box is reachable, the rest prove the services on top of it are healthy.
Confirm a host accepts TCP connections and measure connection time
Watch status codes and response time on any URL
Alert when text appears or vanishes from a page
Check a specific service port stays open
Check endpoints with your own method, headers and body
Catch cron jobs and workers that fail silently
These check different things. Most teams run more than one. Here is the honest breakdown so you pick the right tool per job.
| Question | TCP Ping | HTTP | Heartbeat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Confirms the host is reachable | Yes | Indirectly | No |
| Measures response time | Yes | Yes | No |
| Checks a web page or API responds | No | Yes | No |
| Reads status codes or content | No | Yes | No |
| Catches a job that never ran | No | No | Yes |
| Needs anything on your server | No | No | A ping in |
Keep an eye on database hosts, cache nodes and internal services that never serve a web page but still bring the app down when they vanish.
Watch a fleet of client servers from one account, with public status pages and per-client alerting that keeps everyone informed.
Prove your VPS or side-project box is still up without paying for a heavyweight platform. Starter covers 50 monitors for £9 a month.
Scale from a single box to 2,000 monitors as you grow.
Alerts fire on failure, once confirmed from at least two locations, and again on recovery. Eight native channels, no plugins.
SMS alerts are included on Team and Enterprise.
PulseStack™ ping monitors check that a host accepts a TCP connection on the port you choose (port 80 unless you set another) and record how long the connection takes. They run from London, New York and Sydney. We use TCP rather than ICMP because many networks and cloud firewalls block ICMP echo requests while still serving traffic normally, so a TCP connection is a more dependable test that a service is reachable.
A ping check confirms that a host is reachable and accepting connections on a port. An HTTP check goes further: it requests a page and checks the response status. A server can accept connections while its web application is failing, so most teams use HTTP checks for websites and APIs, and ping checks for other services such as mail, database or game servers.
No. Each ping check is a single TCP connection that either succeeds or fails, and the time it took is recorded. The monitor's chart shows connection times from each location, but PulseStack™ does not calculate packet loss or jitter.
PulseStack™ can only reach hosts that accept connections from the public internet. Devices behind a firewall, such as office routers, NAS boxes or internal servers, would need to be reachable from outside your network. Checks run from London, New York and Sydney, which suits production servers, cloud infrastructure and other public-facing services.
Ping monitors are available from the Starter plan. They run every 60 seconds on Starter and every 30 seconds on Pro, Team and Enterprise, from each of the three locations. The free plan covers HTTP monitors at 5-minute intervals.
It depends on distance. A server in the same region usually connects in tens of milliseconds, while a connection from another continent commonly takes 150 to 300 milliseconds. Watch the chart for each location to learn your baseline, so you can spot when connections start taking longer than usual.
Yes. A monitor is only marked down when at least two of the three locations fail, so a network blip near one location does not page you. A failed check is also re-tested a few seconds later before it counts.
You can enter an IPv4 address, an IPv6 address or a hostname. Hostnames are resolved by DNS at each check.
All 8 native alert channels work with ping monitors: email, SMS, Slack, Discord, Microsoft Teams, Telegram, PagerDuty and webhooks, and Zapier and Google Chat connect through webhooks. You can choose different channels for each monitor, and PulseStack™ also tells you when a host recovers.
Ping monitoring starts on the Starter plan at £9 a month with 60-second checks, or 30-second checks on Pro, Team and Enterprise. Try it with a 14-day trial.
14-day trial. Cancel anytime.