# Monitor types

Source: https://instatus.com/help/monitoring/types

There are various types of monitors you can create.

# Website
Website monitoring checks if your website is accessible and functioning correctly. It performs HTTPS requests to your specified URL and verifies:
- Website availability
- Content matching (body, JSON body, or header)
- Response status codes
- Response time

![Monitor of type website selected](https://instatus.com/help/monitors/types/website.png)

# API
API monitoring helps ensure your API endpoints are responding correctly. Features include:
- Support for all HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, etc.)
- Custom headers and authentication
- Request body support (form, JSON, GraphQL, plain)
- Query parameters

![Monitor of type API selected](https://instatus.com/help/monitors/types/api.png)

# Ping
Ping is a simple monitor that sends an echo request and measures the result. Use cases include:
- Simple uptime & availability monitoring
- Infrastructure health checks
- Network latency monitoring

Ping monitors provide raw network performance metrics without the overhead of HTTP requests.

![Monitor of type ping selected](https://instatus.com/help/monitors/types/ping.png)

# TCP
TCP monitoring verifies if specific ports on your server are accessible and responding. Use cases include:
- Database connection monitoring
- Custom service port checking
- Mail server monitoring (SMTP, IMAP, POP3)
- FTP server availability
- Custom TCP protocol testing

![Monitor of type TCP selected](https://instatus.com/help/monitors/types/tcp.png)

# DNS
DNS monitoring checks the health and configuration of your DNS, verifying that it properly maps A or MX records to their intended IP address or mail server, respectively.

![Monitor of type DNS selected](https://instatus.com/help/monitors/types/DNS.png)

# UDP
UDP monitoring checks that a host and UDP port are reachable and still answering. Because UDP is connectionless, the monitor sends a datagram and inspects the reply. Use cases include:
- DNS servers
- Game servers
- VoIP and streaming gateways
- Any service that listens on a UDP port

![Monitor of type UDP selected](https://instatus.com/help/monitors/type-udp.png)

# Cron / Heartbeat
Cron monitoring tracks scheduled jobs — backups, batch processing, recurring scripts — by having the job ping a URL each time it runs. Instead of Instatus calling your service, your job calls Instatus. Use cases include:
- Nightly backups
- Scheduled data imports and exports
- Queue and worker processes
- Any job that should run on a schedule

![Monitor of type Cron / Heartbeat selected](https://instatus.com/help/monitors/type-cron.png)

- [Get started with Monitoring](https://instatus.com/help/monitoring): Learn how to set up monitors