Managing Your SSL Monitors
This guide covers everything you need to know about adding, editing, pausing, prioritizing, and understanding your certificate monitors.
What Is a Monitor?
A monitor is a single hostname + port + path combination that CertTracker polls on a schedule. Each poll connects via TLS, retrieves the certificate, checks expiry and issuer details, measures response time, and records availability.
Examples:
| Monitor | Use Case |
|---|---|
www.example.com:443/ |
Main website HTTPS |
api.example.com:443/health |
REST API endpoint |
mail.example.com:587 |
SMTP/STARTTLS mail server |
vpn.example.com:8443 |
Custom VPN portal port |
Polling Intervals
| Interval | Available On | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| 5 minutes | Pro, Business, Enterprise | Critical production hosts |
| 15 minutes | Pro, Business, Enterprise | Important non-critical hosts |
| 30 minutes | Pro, Business, Enterprise | Moderate-priority hosts |
| Hourly | All plans | Good default for most hosts |
| 6 Hours | All plans | Hosts that rarely change |
| 12 Hours | All plans | Low-priority or internal hosts |
| Daily | All plans | Minimum polling for cost control |
Adding a Monitor
- Navigate to Monitors in the top nav
- Click + Add Monitor to expand the form
- Fill in Hostname, Domain, Port, Path, Interval, and Poller
- Click Add Monitor
The monitor is created immediately and will be polled on the next timer tick.
Editing a Monitor
Click the pencil (✏️) icon on any monitor row to open the edit form. You can change:
- Hostname, domain, port, and path
- Polling interval
- Poller assignment (public hosted or private on-box)
- Custom tags
- Alert recipients assigned to this monitor
Click Save to apply changes.
Bulk Edit (multiple monitors at once)
The ✏ Bulk button at the top right of the monitor table (next to Pause / Resume) opens a modal that operates on every monitor currently matching your filter view:
- Tags section — pick or type a tag, then click + Add to all or − Remove from all. New tag names are auto-created on add.
- Alert Recipients section — pick a recipient from the dropdown, then click + Add to all or − Remove from all. The recipient record itself stays put either way — only the per-monitor assignment changes.
Both sections are idempotent: monitors that already have (or don't have) the tag or recipient are silently skipped.
The bulk ✏ Bulk button and the per-row ✏️ pencil edit button look similar but do different things. The per-row pencil edits one monitor; the header Bulk button applies one tag-or-recipient change across the current filter set.
Pausing and Resuming
- Pause — Click the pause (⏸) icon on a monitor row. Polling stops and no alerts fire while paused.
- Resume — Click the play (▶) icon to restart polling. The monitor will be picked up on the next cycle.
- Pause All — The Pause All button at the top of the monitor list pauses every monitor for your company simultaneously.
Deleting a Monitor
Click the delete (×) icon on a monitor row. This permanently removes the monitor and all of its history. This action cannot be undone.
Priority Ordering
When multiple monitors are due on the same poll cycle, CertTracker polls them in priority order. Put your most critical hosts at the top.
- Drag the ≡ handle on the left of any row to reorder
- Click Save Priority Order to persist the new sequence
Priority also determines the display order on the Dashboard.
Understanding Monitor Status
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| OK | Certificate is valid, not expiring soon, host is responding |
| Warning | Certificate expires within the warning threshold (default 30 days) |
| Expired | Certificate has expired — immediate action required |
| Changed | Certificate was replaced or reissued since the last known-good state |
| Paused | Polling is suspended; no alerts will fire |
| Unknown | Monitor has never been successfully polled yet |
Viewing Certificate Details
Click any monitor row to open the Certificate Detail panel. This shows:
- Full certificate subject and issuer details
- Serial number and SHA-256 fingerprint
- Valid from / valid to dates and days remaining
- TLS version and cipher suite
- IPv4 address at time of last poll
- Full change history with before/after comparisons
- Availability chart over the selected time range
Tips
- Use descriptive hostnames — they appear on alert emails and the dashboard
- Set your most critical monitors to 5-minute polling so you know within minutes of any issue
- The Change State column turns teal when a cert is replaced — useful for catching unauthorized changes or deployment errors