From zero to monitored, before lunch.
Every account starts with €3 of credit and every released feature — no card required. The current usage-based runway is visible in the product. This page walks the whole first session: monitor, alerts, status page, API key.
1 · Create the account
Register with an email address. The €3 starting credit is the trial: at 10 monitors on 60-second checks it lasts roughly a month, and nothing is locked behind it — client accounts, playbooks and the API included.
2 · Add the first monitor
Monitors → New monitor. Paste a URL, pick an interval — the form shows the monthly cost live while you decide, down to 10-second checks. The defaults are sensible: HTTP monitor, redirects followed, SSL verified. Details on every option live in the monitors guide.
Watch the first checks arrive on the monitor page in real time. A response-time chart builds
within a minute; state is UP once checks succeed.
3 · Wire the alerts
Alerting → Channels — connect where alerts should go: email works out of the box, Slack, Telegram, Discord, MS Teams, PagerDuty and friends take a minute each. Then attach channels to your monitor, or group them into an alert plan (who is told, in what order, after how long) and reuse it across the fleet. The full model — including the three-observation confirmation that keeps single blips from waking anyone — is in the alerting guide.
4 · Publish a status page
Status pages → New page. Pick monitors, choose a slug, publish — component states flip automatically based on checks. Subscribers get incident updates by email and the page is served from a stable up4-hosted URL. More in the status pages guide.
5 · Monitor the things without a URL
Backups, cron jobs, nightly exports: create a scheduled job, get a unique ping URL, and add one curl line to the end of the script. If the ping misses its window, the silence becomes an incident. See scheduled jobs and the backup recipe.
6 · Get an API key
Settings → API tokens. Create a pls_test_ key
first — it operates on your own sandbox
organization, so you can script against the API without touching production. The
API quickstart takes it from there,
and every reference page has a Try-It panel
that runs requests straight from your browser.
Where the money goes
One rate — €9 per million checks for every check type, plus a €3 monthly minimum that already includes €3 of usage. Every monitor form shows its own cost before you save; the wallet page reads like a bank statement because it is one. The billing guide documents the whole machinery, including what happens at zero (grace mode — not a blackout).