Can I Monitor Internal or Private Servers?

Can I Monitor Internal or Private Servers?

Blimey monitors websites by sending HTTP requests from its servers over the public internet.

What Can Be Monitored

• Any website or service accessible via a public URL
• Sites behind CDNs like Cloudflare (as long as they respond to HTTP requests)
• APIs with publicly accessible health check endpoints
• Any server that accepts incoming HTTP/HTTPS connections

What Cannot Be Monitored Directly

• Servers on private networks (192.168.x.x, 10.x.x.x, etc.)
• Services behind VPNs
• Localhost or development servers
• Servers with IP-restricted access (unless Blimey's IPs are whitelisted)

Workarounds

If you need to monitor internal services, consider these approaches:

1. Public health endpoint — expose a lightweight /health endpoint on a public-facing server that checks your internal services and reports their status
2. Reverse proxy — set up a reverse proxy that forwards health check requests to your internal service
3. Status page — create a public status page that reflects internal service health

Important Note

Never expose sensitive internal services directly to the public internet just for monitoring. Always use a dedicated health check endpoint that returns minimal information.