Quick answer
Payment, email, SMS, identity, and other external APIs can fail while your own code is healthy. Learn how to monitor these dependencies proactively.
Your application can be healthy and still fail
Modern applications depend on external services for payments, messaging, authentication, analytics, and more. If one dependency slows down or becomes unavailable, your users can experience failures even when your own servers are running normally.
Monitor the dependency you actually call
A generic homepage check will not tell you whether a payment API or identity endpoint is healthy. Create a monitor around the specific endpoint that matters to your application.
Use safe and stable requests
Prefer documented health endpoints or non-destructive requests. If authentication is required, provide only the minimum permissions necessary and avoid putting live secrets into source code.
Watch latency, not just errors
A provider can remain technically available while response time becomes too slow for your application. Tracking latency gives you an earlier warning than waiting for total failure.
Sources and references
Related PingStag guides
Webhook Monitoring: How to Know When a Webhook Stops Working
Webhooks can fail silently. Learn how to monitor webhook endpoints, validate responses, and detect broken integrations before customers notice.
The '200 OK' Lie: Why You Need JSON Payload Monitoring
Your API returned a 200 status code, but the checkout is broken. Here is why basic HTTP pinging is useless for complex APIs.
API Uptime Monitoring: How to Monitor REST APIs Properly
A practical API monitoring guide covering status codes, authentication, JSON payloads, response content, latency, and downtime alerts.
REST API Health Checks: What Should You Actually Test?
Learn which checks matter for REST API health: availability, latency, status codes, response content, authentication, and dependencies.
