How often should you automatically check your site? Configuring heartbeat and synthetics checks for your API

Heartbeat and synthetics checks are essential components of effective monitoring strategies for services and websites, helping to minimize downtime and maintain service level agreements (SLAs). This article explores the balance between the costs of downtime and monitoring, emphasizing the need to integrate checks into SLAs to ensure reliability. It discusses the importance of determining the right frequency for automatic checks, based on factors like cost, mean time to resolution, and the number of incidents. The text also highlights the use of various monitoring tools and techniques, such as Playwright for end-to-end testing, to simulate user interactions and detect issues early. By calculating the appropriate cadence for these checks, organizations can better manage their operational costs while ensuring their services remain robust and dependable.