SSL monitoring API lets you create, manage, and query SSL certificate monitors programmatically — so you can automate ssl monitoring across every environment, integrate certificate expiry checks into your CI/CD pipeline, and keep dynamic infrastructure protected without touching the dashboard.
What You Can Do with the SSL Monitoring API
The MonitoringDaddy ssl certificate monitoring api gives you full programmatic control over your SSL monitors. Call a REST endpoint, get back structured JSON, and weave monitor ssl certificates programmatically into any workflow your team already runs:
- Provision an SSL monitor automatically when a new domain or subdomain goes live.
- Pull certificate status and days-to-expiry into your own dashboards or status pages.
- Gate a deployment — fail the pipeline if the cert is within your minimum safe threshold.
- Delete or update monitors when a domain is decommissioned, keeping your list clean.
- Fan out across hundreds of subdomains in a single script loop — no GUI bottleneck.
Everything available in the dashboard is accessible via the API. See the full reference in the developer documentation.
Why Automate SSL Monitoring
Manual SSL monitoring works for five domains. It does not work for fifty, five hundred, or a fleet that changes daily. Three patterns make ssl monitoring automation a hard requirement rather than a nice-to-have:
Infrastructure as Code
If your infrastructure is defined in Terraform, Pulumi, or Ansible, your monitoring should be too. Hardcoding domain names in a dashboard creates drift — when a domain is renamed or retired, the orphaned monitor keeps running and the new domain is never watched. Calling the API from your IaC provisioning scripts keeps monitors in sync with reality.
CI/CD Pipeline Gates
A deployment that pushes a new TLS configuration should verify the resulting certificate before promoting to production. Querying the ssl certificate monitoring api in your pipeline lets you assert the certificate is valid and not within a dangerous expiry window — and fail the deploy if it is not. Catching a misconfigured cert at deploy time costs far less than catching it at 3 AM.
Dynamic and Ephemeral Fleets
SaaS platforms provisioning per-customer subdomains, staging environments spun up per pull request, and auto-scaling fleets share a common problem: domain inventory changes faster than any human tracks it. The API lets your provisioning layer register and deregister SSL monitors as domains come and go, keeping coverage complete with no manual steps.
How It Works
The MonitoringDaddy API is a standard REST API authenticated with a Bearer token — your API key, available from account settings. All request and response bodies are JSON. Full endpoint details live in the developer documentation; the examples below use illustrative placeholder paths to show the pattern.
Example: Create an SSL Monitor via POST
To start monitoring a new domain's certificate, POST a monitor definition to the monitors endpoint. The payload specifies the URL to check, the check interval, and the expiry warning threshold in days:
A successful response returns the new monitor object, including its assigned ID:
Example: Get Certificate Status and Expiry via GET
Query an SSL monitor by its ID to retrieve current certificate status and days remaining — the call to make from a deployment gate or dashboard widget:
If the certificate is within the alert threshold, the status field reflects the alert state and an alert will have already been dispatched to your configured channels.
Example: List All SSL Monitors
Retrieve all SSL monitors on your account — useful for audit scripts, bulk expiry reports, or syncing your internal CMDB:
YOUR_API_KEY_HERE) and illustrative monitor IDs. Never commit a real API key to version control. Use environment variables or a secrets manager to inject the token at runtime.Key Capabilities
- Full CRUD — create, read, update, and delete SSL monitors via API with no dashboard interaction.
- Per-monitor expiry thresholds — set 60 days for critical APIs, 15 days for auto-renewed Let's Encrypt domains, anything in between.
- Certificate metadata in responses — issuer, validity flag, expiry date, days remaining, and hostname match returned as structured JSON.
- Configurable check intervals — set monitoring frequency per monitor via a single request field.
- Alert channel assignment — attach email and webhook channels to each monitor programmatically.
- Bulk scripting — loop a domain list, POST a monitor per domain, store returned IDs for future queries.
- Paginated list endpoints — handles large inventories without memory pressure in scripts.
Webhooks and Automation
Pair the API with MonitoringDaddy's outbound webhooks for a bidirectional system: use the API to push monitor configuration in, and webhooks to receive alert events back into your own systems. When a certificate crosses your expiry threshold, MonitoringDaddy POSTs a JSON payload containing the monitor ID, affected URL, days remaining, and alert type — enough to drive any downstream action:
- Open a Jira ticket or GitHub issue automatically when a cert enters its warning window.
- Page on-call via PagerDuty or OpsGenie without manual escalation.
- Trigger a Certbot renewal or ACME client job via a CI/CD webhook.
- Post a structured alert to Slack with a direct link to the affected monitor.
- Write expiry events to Datadog, Splunk, or Grafana Loki for historical trending.
Webhook URLs are configured via the API or dashboard and can be shared across monitors, so a single integration covers your entire certificate fleet.
Use Cases
- SaaS platforms with per-tenant subdomains — register a monitor at provisioning time, delete it at offboarding. Zero manual steps.
- E-commerce and fintech — gate every production deployment on a certificate health check before traffic hits.
- Agencies managing client domains — nightly script that surfaces any certificate under 45 days remaining across every client account.
- DevOps and platform teams — include SSL monitor creation in the Terraform module that provisions each service.
- Security and compliance teams — export certificate metadata into a GRC tool or CMDB without manual inventory work.
New to certificate monitoring? The SSL monitoring guide covers the full feature set from the dashboard perspective first.
Why MonitoringDaddy
MonitoringDaddy is purpose-built for website, SSL, domain, and server monitoring — the API is not an afterthought. You get a clean REST interface, structured JSON responses, and immediate alert delivery rather than batched hourly digests.
- Checks run from external infrastructure — you see exactly what a real user or API client sees, including CDN and proxy certificates.
- Webhooks fire at the next check cycle after threshold is crossed — no batching delay.
- API access is included in your plan — no per-seat fee. See the pricing page for monitor limits.
- Independent watchdog — confirms certificate state from outside your network even when automated renewal is in place.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the SSL monitoring API?
The MonitoringDaddy SSL monitoring API is a REST interface for creating, querying, updating, and deleting SSL certificate monitors programmatically. You send HTTP requests authenticated with an API key and receive structured JSON containing certificate status, expiry dates, and monitor configuration. Full endpoint details are in the developer documentation.
How do I authenticate with the SSL certificate monitoring API?
Authentication uses a Bearer token — your API key — passed in the Authorization header of every request. You can generate and rotate API keys from your account settings. Never embed a live API key directly in source code; inject it at runtime using environment variables or a secrets manager.
Can I use the API to automate SSL monitoring across hundreds of domains?
Yes. The API is designed for bulk workflows. You can script a loop that reads a domain list and POSTs a monitor creation request for each domain, storing the returned monitor IDs for future queries. List endpoints are paginated so large inventories do not require loading everything into memory at once.
Does the API return the certificate expiry date and days remaining?
Yes. When you GET an SSL monitor, the response includes a structured ssl object containing the certificate validity flag, the expiry date as an ISO 8601 timestamp, the number of days remaining, the issuer name, and whether the certificate's hostname matches the monitored URL. This data is updated at every check cycle.
Can I use the API to trigger SSL checks from a CI/CD pipeline?
Yes. A common pattern is to query the certificate status endpoint after a deployment completes and assert that ssl.valid is true and ssl.days_remaining is above your minimum threshold. If either assertion fails, the pipeline step exits with an error code and the deployment is blocked before it reaches production traffic.
How do webhooks work with the SSL monitoring API?
You configure webhook URLs as alert channels — either via the API or the dashboard — and attach those channels to one or more SSL monitors. When a monitored certificate crosses the expiry threshold you set, MonitoringDaddy POSTs a JSON alert payload to each attached webhook URL. The payload includes the monitor ID, the affected URL, days remaining, and the alert type, so downstream systems can act without further lookups.
Is the API available on the free plan?
API access is included with your MonitoringDaddy account. The number of monitors you can create and the check interval options available depend on your plan tier. See the pricing page for a breakdown of monitor limits, check frequencies, and alert channel counts across all plans.
Where can I find the full API endpoint reference and field definitions?
The complete, authoritative endpoint reference — including all supported fields, accepted values, error codes, and example requests — is in the developer documentation. The code examples on this page are illustrative and use placeholder values to show the general pattern; always use the developer docs for implementation.