Last updated: 2026-07-19
What Is Synthetic Monitoring?
Definition
Synthetic monitoring (also called active or proactive monitoring) uses simulated user interactions to test the availability and performance of a service. Instead of waiting for a real user to report an issue, synthetic checks run on a schedule from multiple locations and report problems as they happen. Common synthetic checks include HTTP requests, API calls, and multi-step browser transactions.
Why it matters
Real user monitoring (RUM) tells you about problems after users experience them. Synthetic monitoring tells you before users notice. If your checkout flow breaks at 2 AM when no users are shopping, synthetic monitoring catches it immediately. Synthetic checks also provide consistent, controlled measurements: you know exactly what was tested and when, unlike RUM data which varies by user, browser, and network conditions.
Example
An e-commerce site uses synthetic monitoring to check their checkout flow every 5 minutes. At 3 AM, the payment gateway returns an error. The synthetic check catches it, fires an alert, and the on-call engineer fixes the issue before the first morning shopper arrives. Without synthetic monitoring, the team would not know about the issue until customers started complaining at 8 AM.
How PingWatchdog helps
PingWatchdog provides synthetic HTTP, HTTPS, TCP, and DNS monitoring from multiple probe regions. Checks run as frequently as every 30 seconds on paid plans. Multi-step transaction monitoring is on the roadmap. For now, you can chain webhook-triggered checks to simulate simple multi-step flows.