Optional expiry monitoring can warn you before an SSL certificate or domain registration reaches its known expiration date. These checks are preventive and separate from website availability checks.
SSL certificate expiry monitoring
SSL monitoring reads the public certificate presented for the monitored HTTPS hostname. You can choose a warning threshold of:
- 30 days.
- 14 days.
- 7 days.
When the remaining certificate lifetime first enters the selected warning period, Uptime Basics queues eligible SSL expiry notifications.
Domain-expiry monitoring
Domain-expiry monitoring looks for a published registration-expiration event through domain registration data. You can choose a warning threshold of:
- 60 days.
- 30 days.
- 14 days.
Some registries do not publish usable expiry data consistently. In that case, the monitor can report that expiry information is unavailable rather than inventing a date.
When a public expiry date advances by about one registration year close to the previous expiry date, the monitor can report Renewal needs confirmation. Some registries temporarily extend the public date during an auto-renew grace period, so the new date alone does not prove that the registrar received payment or completed renewal. Confirm the result in the registrar account before acknowledging it in Uptime Basics.
Public registration states such as redemption, pending deletion, or a domain hold are shown as Registration needs attention and should be reviewed immediately with the registrar.
How often expiry checks run
Enabled SSL and domain-expiry checks run approximately once every 24 hours. They are not intended for minute-by-minute detection because certificate and registration dates do not normally need that frequency.
The displayed Last checked time confirms when the latest expiry lookup completed.
When notifications are sent
Expiry notifications are state-change based:
- A warning can be queued when the remaining time first crosses the configured threshold.
- A separate expired notification can be queued if the known date passes.
- A check-failed notification can be queued when expiry information cannot be retrieved after a previously different state.
- A renewal-confirmation notification can be queued when the public date advances near the prior expiry date.
- A registration-attention notification can be queued when public data reports a serious lifecycle state.
- A recovery notification can be queued when a warning, expired, or error state later returns to Healthy.
An unchanged warning is not resent every day. This avoids daily duplicates while the same condition remains active. Changing from Warning to Expired is a new state and can produce another notification.
Delivery requirements
SSL and domain-expiry notifications use the monitor's Alert Channels. A channel must be enabled both under Account > Alerts and on the monitor, with a verified destination selected.
Expiry alerts do not create downtime incidents
An approaching expiry date does not mean the website is currently unavailable. Expiry warnings therefore do not:
- Change the monitor's Up or Down state.
- Reduce uptime percentage.
- Create an availability or performance incident.
If an expired or invalid certificate prevents the normal HTTPS availability request from succeeding, that separate request can produce an SSL/TLS availability failure and follow the standard outage-confirmation process.
After renewing a certificate or domain
Allow the next daily expiry check to run. When the newly published date is visible and the state returns to Healthy, eligible destinations can receive a recovery notification.
For certificates, confirm the renewed certificate is served by every public endpoint and uses the monitored hostname. For domains, use the registrar account as the authoritative source for renewal and payment. If Uptime Basics asks for confirmation, select I confirmed the renewal only after checking there.