Page snapshots
An error message says a check failed; a snapshot shows what the checker actually got. It is often the fastest way to tell a real outage from a false alarm: an error page, a login wall, a CAPTCHA, an empty body and a slow page all look different in a snapshot even when the error text is similar.
Which checks capture a snapshot
Section titled “Which checks capture a snapshot”| Monitor type | What is captured | When |
|---|---|---|
| Website / HTTP, API | The HTTP response the checker received: status line, headers and body | On a failing check (or a redirect loop) - at the moment a monitor goes down and on later failing checks while it stays down |
| Content check, Transaction | A screenshot of the page in the browser (WebP image) | On the browser check’s run |
| Page speed | A screenshot of the loaded page (WebP image) | On the browser check’s run |
| Ping, Port, DNSBL, SSL / domain expiry, Web Risk, Database, SNMP, Counter | Nothing - there is no page to capture | - |
A successful HTTP check stores no snapshot: snapshots exist to show evidence of a failure.
Find a snapshot in the app
Section titled “Find a snapshot in the app”- Open the monitor’s statistics page (
/sites/stats/{id}). - Open the outage from Latest incidents or the Outages view of Recent checks.
- In the outage panel, the Snapshot section shows what was captured. For an HTTP snapshot, switch between plain (the raw response text) and html (the page rendered from the captured body).
Read a snapshot with the API
Section titled “Read a snapshot with the API”A result that has one carries hasSnapshot: true and a snapshotUrl:
curl "https://api2.host-tracker.com/monitor/MONITOR_ID/result?state=down&from=START&to=END" \ -H "Authorization: Bearer $HT_TOKEN"Download it with GET /monitor/{monitorId}/result/{resultId}/snapshot (scope monitor:read):
- HTTP/API snapshots are returned as
text/plain(headers and body). Add?as=htmlto get the captured page as HTML, with its original content type, a<base>tag so relative links resolve, and anoindexmarker. - Browser snapshots are returned as
image/webp. - Responses carry
ETagandLast-Modified; sendIf-None-Matchto get304 Not Modifiedfor a copy you already have. Snapshots never change once stored.
For a monitor with public statistics (openStat), its snapshots are public too.
Reading an HTTP snapshot
Section titled “Reading an HTTP snapshot”- Status line and headers show what the server really answered - for example a
403with acf-rayheader from a CDN challenge, or a503from a load balancer. - The body shows whether the page was an error page, a maintenance page, a login form or your real content missing an expected keyword. See Why is it down.