We build and deploy dozens of projects, from quick demos and friends' early startups to polished portfolio websites and APIs. But once they're live, we often forget to check if they're still running. These projects are shared with others, but over time, they can become easy to overlook or abandon.
Weeks later, a potential employer or client may open the link… and it's broken.
That got me thinking:
💡 How can I keep an eye on my deployed websites without paying for monitoring tools or setting up servers?
🤖 Can a GitHub Action Solve That Problem?
I started exploring available options. I wanted something that:
✅ Runs entirely in GitHub Actions
✅ Requires no servers or subscriptions
✅ Checks HTTP status codes and response times
✅ Creates an issue if a site goes down
✅ Logs results over time for tracking
After some exploration and testing, I decided to roll up my sleeves and build something that does exactly what I needed.
👉 Meet Uptime-monitor Action
I built a simple, open-source GitHub Action that pings your list of URLs and logs the results. If something breaks, it automatically opens a GitHub Issue in your repo.
Perfect for:
- Demo websites
- Portfolio projects
- API endpoints
- Static sites hosted on GitHub Pages or Netlify
Or any other website that doesn't require a more advanced monitoring system.
🔧 How It Works
You create a workflow in your project, add the uptime-monitor Action, and define the websites to monitor along with required and optional settings.
On each run (manually or on a schedule), it:
- Sends a request to each URL you added
- Logs the status code and response time
- Creates an issue if any response isn’t 200 OK (success codes are configurable as well)
Example log line:
[2025-06-14T16:26:04+02:00] https://httpstat.us/200 → Status: 200, Response: 0.307s
Example issue:
The following site(s) returned a non-success HTTP status at 2025-06-20T17:35:00+02:00:
https://httpbin.org/status/404 returned status 404
https://httpbin.org/status/500 returned status 500
🚀 Getting Started
To start using this Action, some configuration is required, but I’ve written detailed documentation, even for those new to GitHub Actions.
For detailed instructions, I suggest starting with the Getting Started guide.
For advanced configuration and FAQs, refer to the Readme as well.
🧑💻 Why I Open-Sourced It
This project started as a weekend hack to solve a real personal need. But I know other developers face the same problem.
So, I cleaned it up, documented it, and made it beginner-friendly.
I’d love to get some feedback, contributions, or ideas for improvement!
🔗 Try it yourself
GitHub Repo → cd-roman/uptime-monitor
Star it for later or plug it into your current project and never lose track of your sites again.
Thanks for your time and attention.
Take care!
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