What's the difference between ping and port monitoring?

Ping (ICMP) tells you the host is reachable on the network. A TCP port monitor goes further and confirms a specific service — a database, mail server or SSH daemon — is actually accepting connections.

Can I monitor internal or non-web servers?

Moonitor checks from the public internet, so the host needs to be reachable publicly. For private-only jobs and services, use heartbeat monitors, which work outbound-only.

How often are hosts checked?

On your configured interval — down to every 30 seconds on Team and Max plans — with response times recorded on every check.

Which ports can I monitor?

Any TCP port from 1 to 65535. Common choices are databases (5432, 3306, 6379), mail (25, 465, 587, 993) and SSH (22).

Part of every Moonitor plan

Ping and port monitoring for everything without a web page

Not everything you depend on speaks HTTP. Database servers, mail hosts, VPN gateways, office routers, game servers — when one of these goes quiet, no website monitor will tell you. Ping monitoring answers the more basic question: is this machine reachable at all?

Moonitor pairs ICMP ping monitors with TCP port monitors, so you can watch both raw reachability and the specific service — is the host up, and is PostgreSQL actually accepting connections on 5432?

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How it works

Add a host
Point a ping monitor at any hostname or IP address — servers, routers, NAS boxes, anything that answers ICMP.
Or watch a specific port
A port monitor opens a TCP connection to the service itself: 5432 for Postgres, 3306 for MySQL, 25/587 for mail, 22 for SSH.
Checked around the clock
Reachability is tested continuously with response-time history, so you see degradation coming before it becomes an outage.
Alerted the moment it drops
A host that stops answering — verified from a second country first — opens an incident and alerts your contacts immediately.

What you get

ICMP ping monitors

Straightforward reachability for hosts and network gear, with latency recorded on every check.

TCP port monitors

Confirm the actual service is accepting connections, not just that the box is powered on.

Response-time history

Latency is charted per check, so a slowly degrading link is visible before it fails.

No false alarms

A transit wobble between one checker and your host isn't an outage — every failure is reproduced from another country before you're paged.

Thresholds per contact

Page the on-call after three consecutive failures while a webhook fires on the first — each contact sets its own threshold.

Same stack as everything else

Ping and port monitors share alerts, incident history, status pages and the API with every other monitor type.

Frequently asked questions

What's the difference between ping and port monitoring?: Ping (ICMP) tells you the host is reachable on the network. A TCP port monitor goes further and confirms a specific service — a database, mail server or SSH daemon — is actually accepting connections.
Can I monitor internal or non-web servers?: Moonitor checks from the public internet, so the host needs to be reachable publicly. For private-only jobs and services, use heartbeat monitors, which work outbound-only.
How often are hosts checked?: On your configured interval — down to every 30 seconds on Team and Max plans — with response times recorded on every check.
Which ports can I monitor?: Any TCP port from 1 to 65535. Common choices are databases (5432, 3306, 6379), mail (25, 465, 587, 993) and SSH (22).

Every failure verified before you’re alerted

Moonitor re-runs every failing check from a second country before opening an incident — so a network wobble near one checker never becomes a false alarm on your phone. Explore the full feature set, read the docs, or automate it all with the API.

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