Updated 2026-07-04
An SSL or domain expiry warning is different from a normal down alert — the check isn't necessarily failing, but something it's watching is approaching a deadline.
Why you got the warning
SSL and domain expiry checks don't wait until the last moment to tell you something is about to lapse. Instead they warn at a set of thresholds as the expiry date gets closer — by default 30, 14, 7, and 1 days before a certificate expires, and 30, 14, and 7 days before a domain registration expires. Each threshold fires once as it's crossed, rather than repeating every check run, so you won't get the same warning over and over.
This usually isn't an outage
A certificate or domain approaching expiry doesn't mean the site is down right now — it means it will be, or will start showing certificate warnings to visitors, if nothing is renewed before the deadline. Treat it as a scheduled task with a countdown, not an incident to firefight. An expiry warning never opens an incident and never counts against uptime — only an actual failure (below) does.
What to do
- Certificate expiring — renew the certificate through whatever process normally issues it (many hosts renew automatically; this warning is most useful for certificates that don't).
- Domain expiring — renew the domain registration at your registrar.
Adjusting the thresholds
If the default warning schedule doesn't match how far ahead you want notice, the thresholds are configurable per check in its alert policy — add earlier thresholds if you want more lead time, or remove the closer ones if they're just noise once you already know about a renewal in progress.
If a certificate or domain actually lapses
If a certificate fully expires (rather than just approaching expiry), an HTTPS check with certificate verification enabled, or a standalone SSL check, will start failing outright — and if a domain's registration actually lapses (or its RDAP lookup fails), a domain check does the same. Either is treated exactly like any other check failure: it goes through normal confirmation before an incident opens, and the downtime counts against that check's uptime percentage in reports and on status pages — unlike the advance warnings above.