> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.statuspal.io/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.statuspal.io/monitoring-and-automation/out-of-the-box-monitoring.md).
# Out-of-the-box monitoring
Enable StatusPal monitoring on any service in your StatusPal status page by editing or creating a new service, then select StatusPal monitoring under the "Monitoring and incident automation" section.
Once you enable "StatusPal monitoring" on a service, we'll ping the provided URL once per minute. If it goes down (returns a status different than `2xx`) for more than 5 minutes, we'll notify somebody on your team (according to the "Notification recipients" setting).
### Automatically create incident
If you check the "automatically create incident" checkbox, we'll create an incident affecting this service automatically and close it once the service is up again for at least two minutes.
### Monitoring settings
* **HTTP method** allows you to select what HTTP method should be used when our monitoring agent makes an HTTP request to your services once every minute.
* **Ping URL** is the URL our monitoring agent will ping periodically to determine if this service is down or up.
* **HTTP headers** allow you to customize the header that should be sent together with the periodic HTTP request to your service's ping URL.
### Display response time chart
If you check this option, we'll automatically generate a "response time chart" based on your monitoring check and display it on your status page below your list of services.
Response time chart as featured in your status page
### Pause monitoring during maintenance
You can check this option to make your monitoring check aware of your scheduled maintenance windows on the status page. If a monitoring check starts failing during a planned maintenance window, we'll ignore the failing check.
## Testing your monitoring setup
A common mistake when testing monitoring is to configure a URL that's already down, or to swap the ping URL after setup — both reset the check state and won't trigger notifications or auto-incidents.
The correct approach is to set the **Ping URL** once to a URL that starts **up** (returning `2xx`), then make it go **down** (`5xx`, `4xx`, or timeout) without changing the URL itself.
You can do this easily using [webhook.site](https://webhook.site):
1. Open [webhook.site](https://webhook.site) in one tab and keep Statuspal open in another. Copy **Your unique URL** and paste it into your service's **Ping URL** field. Save the service.\
\
2. Wait until the service status indicator in Statuspal turns **green** (confirming the first successful ping).
3. In webhook.site, click **Edit**, change the response status to `500`, and click **Save**.\
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4. Wait up to **5 minutes** — Statuspal will detect the failure and create the auto-incident, and your notification recipients will receive an alert.
{% hint style="info" %}
Statuspal only triggers notifications and auto-incidents after a service has been confirmed **up** first. Starting with a down URL won't trigger anything.
{% endhint %}
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