DNS monitoring
When DNS breaks, nothing else matters — the healthiest server in the world is unreachable if its name does not resolve. PingDog resolves your hostname on a schedule and watches the answer.
What PingDog checks
- The hostname resolves successfully
- Resolution time is measured on each check
- You can spot a changed or missing answer — a propagation failure or a hijack
DNS failures are uniquely painful because they are invisible from inside your own network, which is usually cached and correct. From the outside, a botched record change, an expired domain, or a hijack takes everything down at once. A DNS check watches resolution the way the rest of the world sees it.
It's also an early-warning signal for a change nobody meant to make: a record that suddenly points somewhere unexpected is worth an alert.
Anonymous, pay-per-check
Like everything on PingDog, this check needs no account: your key is the account, you pay once at $0.0005 per delivered check in USDC on Base, and nothing renews. A real free tier runs up to 3 monitors at a 5 minutes interval with no payment at all. See how pricing works.
Frequently asked
What does DNS monitoring catch?
A hostname that stops resolving (an expired domain, a broken record change, a propagation failure) and — by watching the answer — a resolution that changes unexpectedly, which can indicate hijacking.
How do I set it up?
Give a URL or hostname; PingDog extracts the hostname automatically and resolves it on your schedule, measuring resolution time each check.