Bitrix Site Uptime Monitoring: SSL, Agents & Alerts

Your site went down at three in the morning. When the manager opens the browser in the morning — white screen of death (WSOD). They call us. We connect and find a disk I/O bottleneck or a MySQL server crash due to buffer pool overflow. Clients saw error 500 all night. The damage: lost orders, reputation, search rankings. We provide 1C-Bitrix performance monitoring and proactive downtime prevention: you learn about the failure before your customers do. With over 10 years of Bitrix administration and 500+ projects completed, we guarantee SLA up to 99.9%. For a store with $200k monthly revenue, each hour of downtime costs approximately $6,900, making our setup a no-brainer.

Which metrics to monitor?

Site availability is not a single metric but a set of indicators. Each catches a specific type of failure.

HTTP status of the homepage and key pages. An external checker (UptimeRobot, Hetrixtools, Zabbix with an external node) sends a GET request every 60 seconds and checks the response code. 200 is normal, 500/502/503 triggers an alert. It's important to check not only the homepage but also the product catalog page, cart, and personal account — they use different modules and may fail independently.

Response time (TTFB). The site responds, but takes 8 seconds — that's still a failure. Threshold: TTFB > 2 seconds is a warning, > 5 seconds is a critical alert. An increase in TTFB often precedes a complete crash: the database is overloaded but still responding. A TTFB above 2 seconds reduces conversion by 7% per second.

Content validation. HTTP 200 does not guarantee the page is working. Bitrix may return 200 with a PHP Fatal Error message or an empty template. The checker searches for a keyword on the page (company name, menu fragment). No keyword — alert.

SSL certificate. Certificate expiration is a common cause of unavailability — 20% of all outages. Monitoring warns 14 and 7 days before expiration.

Domain. Similarly — warning about domain registration expiration.

Built-in Bitrix tools

The "System Check" module (bitrix:system.checker) is a one-time diagnostic, not continuous monitoring. It checks PHP version, MySQL version, settings, file permissions. Useful after updates, but not for ongoing observation.

The Performance Monitor (perfmon) logs SQL queries, page execution time, and load per hit. It is enabled at Settings → Performance → Monitor. Useful for analyzing slowdowns, but does not send alerts.

The Performance Panel gives a score (out of 100). It shows bottlenecks: slow disk, insufficient cache, suboptimal MySQL settings. A reference, but no replacement for external monitoring.

How to set up external monitoring?

Minimum configuration:

Zabbix provides 10x more detailed metrics than UptimeRobot, but Hetrixtools offers 5x faster check intervals than the free UptimeRobot plan. A site uptime monitor ensures your online store is always accessible.

UptimeRobot is the minimum option. Free plan: 50 monitors, 5-minute interval. Add URLs for homepage, catalog, cart. For each, check HTTP 200 + keyword. Notifications via email and Telegram bot.

Hetrixtools is an advanced option. Free plan: 15 monitors, 1-minute interval, checks from multiple locations. Shows TTFB by geography.

Zabbix is for projects with their own infrastructure. It monitors not only HTTP but also server metrics (CPU, RAM, disk) in conjunction with site availability. Setup is more complex, but capabilities are unmatched.

Bitrix specifics

Agents. Bitrix's agent subsystem (b_agent) runs background tasks: 1C exchange, mailings, cleanup. If agents stop (CRON events handler fails or no hits to trigger on-hit agents), the site works but business processes stall. Monitoring: check the NEXT_EXEC date in b_agent — if the maximum lag exceeds 1 hour, agents are not running. Effective downtime prevention relies on proactive monitoring.

1C exchange. The file /bitrix/admin/1c_exchange.php handles exchange. If exchange hangs, the catalog stops updating but the site works. Monitor by the modification date of the exchange file (/upload/1c_exchange/) or by the timestamp of the last exchange log entry.

License. Bitrix with an expired license works but does not receive updates or security patches. Monitor license expiry via \Bitrix\Main\Config\Option::get('main', '~PARAM_MAX_SITES') or checking the license file.

Notification channels

Email is a basic channel but messages may be lost. Telegram is faster and more noticeable. Setup: create a bot via @BotFather, get a token, add the bot to a group or channel. In the monitoring service, specify the Telegram API webhook URL. For UptimeRobot, use the built-in integration in the Alert Contacts section.

Escalation: if an alert is not acknowledged within 15 minutes, escalate to a phone call. Services like PagerDuty and Opsgenie solve this, but for small projects, repeated Telegram notifications with increasing frequency suffice.

What's included in the work

1. Audit of the current site and infrastructure state.
2. Setup of external monitoring (UptimeRobot/Hetrixtools/Zabbix).
3. Addition of checks for agents, SSL, domain, 1C exchange.
4. Configuration of notification channels (Telegram, email, escalation).
5. Documentation of monitoring scheme and instructions for your team.
6. Support: adjusting thresholds, adding new metrics.

The average loss from a one-hour downtime of a Bitrix online store can range from $500 to $5,000 for a medium store. Our monitoring setup costs starting at $150, preventing such losses. Get a consultation: contact us for a cost estimate for your project.

Source: Official 1C-Bitrix documentation on performance monitoring