# How to Create Checks

DigitalOcean Uptime is a monitoring service that checks the health of any URL or IP address. Use Uptime to monitor the latency, uptime, and SSL certificates of any website or host, and receive email or Slack alerts at thresholds you choose.

1. To create your first Uptime Check, click the **Create a new Uptime Check** button on the Uptime landing page. If you’ve already created a check, on the top right, click **Create Uptime Check**. This takes you to the **Create Uptime Check** page.

   ![Create Uptime Check page showing options to choose a check type, specify an endpoint URL, select multiple regions for monitoring, and name the uptime check.](https://docs.digitalocean.com/screenshots/uptime/create-uptime-check.c7d81bfe5889a91025cfb627da634d07d0b23c31527deb2aa36b05e8f1208a1a.png)
2. Choose the type of check to perform. The default is **HTTPS**. The options are:

   - **HTTPS**: perform checks over HTTPS, including certificate expiry monitoring. Any HTTP response code outside of the 200–299 “success” range counts as an outage.
   - **HTTP**: perform checks over plain HTTP. Any HTTP response code outside of the 200–299 “success” range counts as an outage.
   - **PING**: perform an ICMP ping check, useful for hosts that aren’t running a web server.
3. Specify the check endpoint. This is typically an **HTTPS** or **HTTP** URL. For **PING** checks, it is a hostname (**example.com**) or IP address (**203.0.113.4**).
4. Choose the regions you’d like to perform the check from. By default, all regions are selected. If you have no customers or users in a particular region, you can deselect that region to reduce the possibility of alert fatigue from unimportant events.

   The following regions are available:

   - Asia East
   - Europe
   - USA East
   - USA West

   You must select one or more regions.
5. Enter a name for the check.
6. Press the **Create Uptime Check** button. Your Uptime check is created and its status page loads, pending data from the first checks.

   As results start coming in, the latency graph populates with data. Refresh the page to get up-to-date check status information.