SSL monitors
SSL monitors track the TLS certificate of a domain — when it expires, who issued it, and whether the chain validates. We alert you before the certificate expires so you have time to renew.
Quick setup
- Go to Add SSL alert.
- Enter the domain (no scheme, no path — just
example.com). - Save. The first SSL check runs within a few minutes.
How it works
Once per day we open a TLS connection to port 443 on the domain, inspect the certificate, and store the result. The dashboard shows days until expiry, the issuer, and the validity status.
An alert fires when the certificate has 30 days or less until expiry, plus immediately if validation fails (expired, wrong hostname, broken chain). The alert repeats per the resend interval until you renew.
What we check
- Certificate expiry date
- Issuer (the CA that signed it)
- Subject + Subject Alternative Names — does the cert cover the domain you entered
- Chain validity — do all intermediates resolve to a trusted root
- TLS protocol + cipher suite
Troubleshooting
"Certificate chain incomplete" but Let's Encrypt works in my browser. Browsers ship intermediate certs; servers must too. Add the intermediate (e.g. ISRG Root X1) to your nginx ssl_certificate chain.
I see "wildcard cert valid for *.example.com" but the alert is for foo.bar.example.com. Wildcards cover one label only — they don't match subsubdomains. Either add an SAN for the host or use a multi-domain cert.
Why am I being alerted 30 days before expiry? 30 days is the threshold — once a cert has 30 days or less left, ViewPeek emails you. Renew and the cert's expiry pushes back past the threshold; alerts stop on the next check.
Next steps
- Set up channel alerts so cert expiry hits Slack, not just email.
- Add an uptime monitor for the same domain to catch HTTPS-level issues.