Checks
Check websites, APIs and scheduled jobs, with a second region confirming network failures before we alert you.
- Interval
- 30 s paid, 3 min free
- Regions
- 6
- Check types
- 6
New in 2.14 Maintenance windows
Know when your site stops answering.
Tern checks your websites, APIs and scheduled jobs every 30 seconds from six regions, keeps a public status page up to date and alerts whoever is on call by email, SMS or phone.
- between checks on paid plans
- 30 s
- check regions on three continents
- 6
- regions must agree before anyone is paged
- 2
- checks free, no card needed
- 10
What Tern does
Four jobs, each small enough to set up in an afternoon.
Features
Status pages
Publish the current state of your services and add incident updates where people can find them.
- Pages
- 1 Free; 3 Team; 10 Business
- Custom domains
- Business
- Themes
- Light and dark
On-call alerts
Set a rota, choose alert channels and give an unacknowledged incident a backup contact.
- Rota
- Team and Business
- Escalation
- Business
- Alert channels
- Email, SMS, phone, team chat, signed webhook
Incident records
Keep a timeline of confirmed failures, acknowledgments and updates sent to your status page.
- Timeline
- Failure, alert, acknowledgment, recovery
- Updates
- Posted to your status page
- Maintenance
- Scheduled windows
Where alerts go
Tern sends alerts and status changes to the tools your team already reads. Nothing to install.
Alerts
Email
Down, recovered and weekly report emails to any address.
Alerts
SMS
Text messages to on-call numbers in 140 countries.
Alerts
Phone call
A spoken alert that repeats until someone presses 1.
Alerts
Team chat
Posts to any chat tool that accepts an incoming webhook.
Developers
Webhooks
Signed JSON for every check result and incident change.
Developers
REST API
Create checks, read results and post incident updates.
Status pages
RSS and Atom
Each status page has a feed of incidents and maintenance.
Status pages
Calendar feed
Maintenance windows as an iCal feed your customers can add.
Pricing
Start on the free plan. Move up when you need faster checks, more status pages or SMS alerts.
All plans and add-onsFree
Check a small website or side project every three minutes with email alerts.
$0free for good
- 10 checks
- 3-minute interval
- 1 status page
- Email alerts
Recommended
Team
Monitor up to 50 checks every 30 seconds and share the on-call work across five people.
$24per month
$240 per year
Pay yearly: 2 months free
- 50 checks
- 30-second interval
- 3 status pages
- SMS and phone alerts (100 SMS/month)
- On-call rota
- 5 team members
Business
Monitor up to 250 checks with escalation policies, single sign-on and status pages on your own domain.
$79per month
$790 per year
Pay yearly: 2 months free
- 250 checks
- 30-second interval
- 10 status pages on your own domain
- 1,000 SMS/month
- Escalation policies
- Single sign-on
- 25 team members
- 13 months of history
Recent releases
Every release, newest first. Follow the feed to hear about the next one.
All releases2.14
Maintenance windows
Schedule maintenance for selected checks and show the work on your public status page.
2.13.1
Alert delivery fixes
Corrected two alert delivery problems found after the phone-alert release.
2.13
Phone alerts and SSL checks
Paid plans gain phone-call alerts, and every plan can monitor certificate expiry.
Questions
All questionsWhat does Free include?
Free includes 10 checks at a three-minute interval, one public status page and email alerts. Every plan includes the API and weekly reports. To add an eleventh check, remove one or move to a paid plan.
How do you confirm a failed check?
A failed network check triggers a repeat from a second region. We open an incident and alert you when the second region also reports failure. For cron checks, a second regional worker confirms a missed heartbeat after the deadline and configured grace period.
Do I need a card to start?
No. Sign up for Free without a card and keep it for as long as it suits your needs.
Can I change plans later?
Yes, in account settings. Upgrades take effect when confirmed, with any prorated charge shown first. Downgrades take effect at renewal; reduce your checks, members and status pages to the new limits before then.
How does yearly billing work, and can I get a refund?
Team costs $240 per year and Business costs $790 per year, paid up front. You can request a yearly-plan refund within 30 days of the charge. Monthly plans are not refunded for part months. Email billing@tern.example.com with your invoice reference.
From the journal
Our on-call rota for six people
How our Leeds team shares the pager, hands over open work and checks that a backup is available.
What a 30-second interval costs us
Faster checks mean more requests, more stored results and more work keeping the monitoring system reliable.
Writing a status update people can use
A useful incident update names the impact, the current work and the time of the next update.
Add your first check in two minutes.
Paste a URL, choose who gets alerted, and Tern starts checking from six regions straight away.