Synthetic monitoring
Synthetic monitoring runs scripted, automated requests against your service on a schedule, from outside, to check that key journeys work. It is a robot pretending to be a user, so problems show up even when no real user has hit them yet.
What it catches
- Outages during quiet hours before real traffic arrives
- Broken critical flows like login or checkout, tested end to end
- Regional or dns and certificate failures, since probes run from multiple locations
Because the probe is identical each run, results are consistent and easy to alert on. A login probe that suddenly fails is a clear signal.
Strengths and limits
Synthetic checks give you a steady baseline and early warning even at three in the morning with zero traffic. But they only test the paths you scripted, and they do not reflect the full variety of real users on real devices. They complement real user monitoring rather than replace it.
Key idea
Synthetic monitoring uses scheduled scripted probes to catch outages and broken flows early, even when no real users are active.