Every monitor in HostTracker is one of a set of check types, and choosing the right one is mostly a question of what the failure would look like from outside: a page that stops answering, a status field that stops saying "ok", a port that closes, a certificate that lapses. The guides in this section walk through each type's settings one panel at a time, with the screenshots from the monitor editor beside them.
Start from the symptom. To have a URL treated as up or down on a real page fetch, use an HTTP check. When what matters is a value inside a JSON or XML response, use an API check. When the pass/fail condition is more specific than "the status was below 400", assertion mode is the rule language those conditions are written in. Ping answers whether a host replies at all; a TCP port check answers whether one specific service is listening; a content check answers whether the rendered page still says what it should; a transaction check drives a browser through a multi-step journey; page speed watches how a single load behaves; and a database check dials the server behind the application and can judge a query result. Several types also carry attached monitors for blacklists, domain expiry, certificate expiry and malware listings, so those do not need tasks of their own.
The guides cover the same ground in the same order: main settings and the schedule, the request configuration for that type, response validation, monitoring locations and the recheck strategy, alert and report subscriptions, a worked example, then the failures that show up in practice and what to do about each one. HostTracker has been monitoring websites since 2004 and now watches over 500,000 websites from 300+ checkpoints in 158 cities across 13 monitor types, sending alerts by email, SMS, voice call, Slack, Telegram and more. To compare the check types side by side before picking one, see the full feature list.