SSL certificate monitoring checks the public certificate served for your monitored hostname and warns you before its known expiry date. It is optional, disabled by default, and available on Starter, Plus, and Pro.
Before you enable it
- Use a public hostname that serves HTTPS on port 443.
- Confirm the monitor's Alert Channels have a verified email or phone destination if you want notifications.
- Remember that expiry monitoring runs separately from normal availability checks.
Uptime Basics validates the certificate presented for the monitored hostname, including trust and hostname authorization. Private or unsupported destinations are not accepted.
Enable SSL monitoring on a new monitor
- From the dashboard, select New Monitor.
- Enter the site name and URL.
- In the optional monitoring section, turn on SSL certificate expiry.
- Under Warn me, choose 30, 14, or 7 days before expiry.
- Finish the remaining monitor settings and select Create Monitor.
Enable it on an existing monitor
- Open the monitor from the dashboard.
- Open Expiry Monitoring under Monitor Tools.
- Select SSL certificate expiry.
- Choose Warn at 30 days, Warn at 14 days, or Warn at 7 days.
- Select Save expiry monitoring.
The section shows the latest known expiry date, days remaining, status, and relative Last checked time after a daily lookup completes. Until then, it can show Not checked yet or an unknown result.
How often the check runs
Enabled certificate-expiry checks run approximately once every 24 hours. They do not run at the monitor's one-minute, five-minute, or other availability interval.
Pausing the monitor also stops expiry checks. When the monitor is reactivated, the scheduler can resume them when due.
What happens when the threshold is reached
When a daily result changes from Healthy to Warning, Expired, or Error, Uptime Basics queues eligible notifications through that monitor's Alert Channels. It does not repeat the same unchanged warning every day.
A return to Healthy can queue a recovery notification. Expiry states do not change the monitor's Up or Down status, availability percentage, or incident history.
Expiry monitoring versus HTTPS availability
Normal HTTPS availability checks validate the secure connection whenever they run. If an invalid or expired certificate prevents that request from succeeding, the monitor can follow the normal failed-check and outage-confirmation process even if optional SSL expiry monitoring is disabled.
SSL expiry monitoring is the preventive reminder that helps you act before that happens.