Monitor Render Services with Health Checks

Never wake up to a down service again. Get instant alerts when things break.

What You'll Build

A monitoring system that:

• Pings all your Render services every 5 minutes
• Checks HTTP status codes and response times
• Alerts you immediately when services go down
• Tracks uptime and generates weekly reports

Requirements

• Plugins: Render (from Lobstash.ai), Web Search
• Time: 5 minutes

Setup

1. Install Render Plugin

Connect Render account
List all services

2. Configure Health Checks

Every 5 minutes, check:
- Service: my-api (https://my-api.onrender.com/health)
- Service: my-frontend (https://my-app.onrender.com)
- Service: my-worker (via Render API status)

Expected: 200 status code, response time <2 seconds

3. Set Up Alerts

Alert me on Telegram if:
- Any service returns non-200 status
- Response time >5 seconds
- Service crashes or enters "suspended" state
- Render dashboard shows degraded performance

Do NOT alert if:
- Service is in "sleeping" state (expected for free tier)

4. Weekly Reports

Every Monday at 9 AM, send:
- Uptime % for each service
- Average response times
- Number of incidents last week
- Any services that need attention

Sample Alert

Service Down:

🚨 RENDER ALERT

Service: my-api
Status: DOWN (500 error)
Last successful check: 8 minutes ago
Response time: timeout

[View logs on Render →](https://dashboard.render.com/...)

Attempting auto-restart...

Auto-Recovery:

✅ Service Recovered

Service: my-api
Status: HEALTHY
Downtime: 12 minutes
Auto-restart: successful

Logs show: memory limit exceeded → increased instance size recommendation

Sample Weekly Report

📊 Render Weekly Report — Feb 5-11

🟢 my-api
Uptime: 99.8%
Avg response time: 245ms
Incidents: 1 (auto-recovered)

🟢 my-frontend
Uptime: 100%
Avg response time: 180ms
Incidents: 0

🟡 my-worker
Uptime: 95.2%
Downtime: 8 hours (planned maintenance)
Incidents: 0

🎯 Recommendations:
- Upgrade my-api to 2GB RAM (hit limits 3x this week)
- Enable Redis caching for my-frontend (response times trending up)

Pro Tips

1. Custom Health Endpoints: Create /health routes that check database, Redis, etc.
2. Incident Tracking: Log every alert to a Notion database for post-mortems
3. Auto-Scaling: If monitoring detects consistent slow responses, trigger Render API to scale up
4. Cost Alerts: Get notified when Render bill exceeds monthly threshold

---

Start monitoring → Launch Claws