Synthetic Monitoring

Simulate visitor interaction with your site to monitor the end user experience.

View Product Info

FEATURES

Simulate visitor interaction

Identify bottlenecks and speed up your website.

Learn More

Real User Monitoring

Enhance your site performance with data from actual site visitors

View Product Info

FEATURES

Real user insights in real time

Know how your site or web app is performing with real user insights

Learn More

Infrastructure Monitoring Powered by SolarWinds AppOptics

Instant visibility into servers, virtual hosts, and containerized environments

View Infrastructure Monitoring Info
Comprehensive set of turnkey infrastructure integrations

Including dozens of AWS and Azure services, container orchestrations like Docker and Kubernetes, and more 

Learn More

Application Performance Monitoring Powered by SolarWinds AppOptics

Comprehensive, full-stack visibility, and troubleshooting

View Application Performance Monitoring Info
Complete visibility into application issues

Pinpoint the root cause down to a poor-performing line of code

Learn More

Log Management and Analytics Powered by SolarWinds Loggly

Integrated, cost-effective, hosted, and scalable full-stack, multi-source log management

 View Log Management and Analytics Info
Collect, search, and analyze log data

Quickly jump into the relevant logs to accelerate troubleshooting

Learn More

New Pingdom feature: Mail server monitoring

We have just added three new dedicated check types for monitoring mail servers, one each for SMTP, POP3 and IMAP.

For these check types, the connection to the specified mail server uses the selected email protocol (SMTP, POP3 or IMAP), something which gives you a very reliable indication that the mail server is up and running and working properly.

You have been able to monitor mail servers before, by just using our TCP port check, but these dedicated check types perform a more thorough and reliable test and should be used instead.

Why should I monitor mail servers?

Imagine an e-store or online service that sends out order confirmations and other information via email. Or a company handling support via email. Or just any company using email for communication (and are there any that don’t?). It is critical that the mail server is working in all of these cases, both for outgoing email (SMTP) and for accessing email accounts (POP3 and IMAP).

How do I get started?

First add a new check in the Pingdom control panel.

In the “Add new check” form, just as with any check, you first name your check and select a check resolution (for example 1 minute, which means that Pingdom will perform the test once a minute).

Then:

Example 1: Monitoring a POP3 or IMAP server

Settings for POP3 and IMAP monitoring

  1. Select “POP3 Sensor” or “IMAP Sensor” as your check type. This will expand the form to show the settings for that check type.
  2. Enter the domain name or IP address of your mail server.
  3. Fill in the port number if you don’t use the standard POP3 or IMAP port.
  4. If you want to look for a specific response string from the server, you can fill that in here. Usually you can leave this empty.
  5. If you use a secure connection, check this box.
Example 2: Monitoring an SMTP server

Settings for SMTP monitoring

  1. Select “SMTP Sensor” as your check type. This will expand the form to show the settings for that check type.
  2. Enter the domain name or IP address of your mail server.
  3. Fill in the port number if you don’t use the standard SMTP port.
  4. If you need a username to access the SMTP server, write it here.
  5. Fill in the password for the username you specified, if any.
  6. If you want to look for a specific response string from the server, you can fill that in here. Usually you can leave this empty.
  7. If you use a secure connection, check this box.

Don’t forget that you can always click on the little question marks to the right of every field in the form to get help.

Once you have done that, just continue as usual with the notification part of the form (for alerts), and save the check.

That’s it! Your mail server is now being monitored by Pingdom. 🙂

Let us know what you think

We love hearing from you, both suggestions and questions. If you want to get in touch with us, please email us at support [at] Pingdom.com (or use our contact form). All feedback is welcome.

Webpages Are Getting Larger Every Year, and Here’s Why it Matters

Last updated: February 29, 2024 Average size of a webpage matters because it [...]

A Beginner’s Guide to Using CDNs

Last updated: February 28, 2024 Websites have become larger and more complex [...]

The Five Most Common HTTP Errors According to Google

Last updated: February 28, 2024 Sometimes when you try to visit a web page, [...]

Page Load Time vs. Response Time – What Is the Difference?

Last updated: February 28, 2024 Page load time and response time are key met [...]

Can gzip Compression Really Improve Web Performance?

Last updated: February 26, 2024 The size of the web is slowly growing. Over [...]

Monitor your website’s uptime and performance

With Pingdom's website monitoring you are always the first to know when your site is in trouble, and as a result you are making the Internet faster and more reliable. Nice, huh?

START YOUR FREE 30-DAY TRIAL

MONITOR YOUR WEB APPLICATION PERFORMANCE

Gain availability and performance insights with Pingdom – a comprehensive web application performance and digital experience monitoring tool.

START YOUR FREE 30-DAY TRIAL
Start monitoring for free