Monitoring
Synthetic Monitoring
Synthetic monitoring is the practice of running scripted, scheduled checks against a website from controlled probe locations — as opposed to real-user monitoring (RUM), which captures data from actual visitors. It catches issues even when traffic is low.
In depth
Synthetic checks range from simple HTTP GETs to full headless-browser scripts that log in, click through a checkout, and verify the order confirmation page. They run on fixed intervals (typically 1-5 minutes) from multiple regions and produce consistent, comparable data.
The trade-off versus RUM: synthetic is repeatable and catches issues even at 3am with no users online, but it doesn't reflect the diversity of real-user devices, networks, and behaviour patterns.
Why it matters
Synthetic monitoring is the only way to detect outages on low-traffic pages, validate uptime against SLAs (you control the measurement), and catch deployment regressions immediately rather than after users start complaining.
How Lemwatch helps with synthetic monitoring
Lemwatch monitors synthetic monitoring continuously and alerts you the moment something changes.
All features →Related terms
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Incident
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Recovery Time Objective
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Recovery Point Objective
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Browse the full Lemwatch monitoring glossary (47 terms).