Your monitor shows down but the service works fine from your browser. Common scenario with simple fixes. This guide covers the root causes and diagnostics.
Why monitors fail when service works • Firewall blocking Uptime Kuma IP • SSL/TLS errors • DNS resolution issues • Wrong protocol or port • Timeout too aggressive • FAQ
Your monitor is the “UK-hosted SmartXHosting Uptime Kuma” instance — not your own computer. If the monitor can’t reach your service, but you can, the difference is the route, credentials or configuration between the two.
Most common root causes:
If your service is protected by a WAF, Imunify360, Cloudflare or similar, it may block automated traffic including Uptime Kuma. Signs:
Fix: ask SmartXHosting for your Uptime Kuma instance’s source IP, then whitelist it in your service’s firewall/WAF. Cloudflare: Security › WAF › Tools › IP Access Rules › Allow. Imunify360: Events › find the blocked attempt and whitelist.
Monitor marked down with message like “SSL certificate error”, “unable to verify”, or “self signed certificate”:
If the monitored domain resolves differently depending on where you query from:
Fix: wait for propagation, or set retries to 2–3 in the monitor settings. For geo-DNS situations, the monitor sees what customers in that routing zone see — which is the point.
Obvious but commonly missed:
:8080) dropped when service moved to default port. Or vice versa.Verify with curl from your own machine — if curl to the exact URL works, Uptime Kuma should work too (barring firewall).
Services with occasional slow responses (e.g. WordPress under heavy load) fail brief HTTP timeouts even when working correctly.
UK support for Uptime Kuma connection issues
SmartXHosting support can share the source IP of your Uptime Kuma instance and help troubleshoot WAF/firewall whitelist configuration.
Open a support ticketQ: Monitor fails but the site works in my browser.
A: Check firewall blocking, SSL errors, wrong protocol/port, timeout. Curl the URL from a Linux machine to reproduce the error.
Q: How do I get Uptime Kuma’s IP to whitelist?
A: Contact SmartXHosting support. They provide the current source IP range.
Q: Cloudflare blocks my monitor.
A: Cloudflare Security › WAF › Tools › IP Access Rules. Allow the Uptime Kuma IP.
Q: Monitor fails only sometimes.
A: Intermittent = retry count. Set Retries to 2–3 to absorb transient failures.
Q: “SSL handshake timeout”.
A: TLS 1.2+ required. Old TLS 1.0 servers fail modern SSL. Update the target service’s TLS config or use TCP monitor on port 443 as workaround.