Acceptable Use Policy

Last updated: 2026

This policy is part of the Terms of Service of Website Alive, the uptime-monitoring service operated by Acara Crest Inc. It says what the service may and may not be used for, what the limits of each plan mean in practice, and the controls built into the service so that it cannot be turned against systems nobody asked us to monitor.

What the service does, and only does

For every monitor you create, the service makes one request at a time, at the interval your plan allows, from our own server, and records the result. The kinds of monitor are:

• Website and API checks: one HTTP or HTTPS request to the URL you give, following up to five redirects; we record the status code, the response time, whether a keyword you specified was present, and a short description of any error. We do not store page content.
• Certificate expiry: one TLS handshake per day to read the certificate's expiry date.
• Domain expiry: one RDAP lookup per day to the public registry for the domain's expiry date.
• Heartbeats: no outbound request at all; your own job calls a URL we give you, and we raise an incident when it stops.

Every request identifies itself with the user agent Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; UptimeMonitor/1.0; +https://website-alive.com), so the operator of any site we check can see who is calling and why.

You may only monitor what you are entitled to monitor

You confirm that each target you add is a website, API or service that you own, operate, or are authorised by its owner to monitor. Monitoring a system to study, probe or burden it without that authorisation is not permitted, and the service is built so that it cannot be used as a scanning or attack tool:

• Public internet only. The service refuses any target that resolves to a private, loopback, link-local, carrier-grade NAT, multicast or reserved address, including cloud metadata addresses, on IPv4 and IPv6. A target is checked when it is added and again every time it is resolved, so a public hostname that later points at a private address stops being checked. Every redirect is re-checked the same way.
• Web ports only. Only http:// and https:// URLs can be monitored, and only on ports 80 and 443 or ports above 1024. The service does not scan ports, enumerate hosts or crawl sites.
• One request per check. Each check is a single request with a timeout of at most 30 seconds. The fastest interval sold is one minute, so the most any one monitor ever sends to a target is one request a minute. Monitors cannot be scheduled faster than the plan allows, and a plan that lapses pauses its monitors.
• Nothing is published without your choice. A public status page shows only the display name you give each monitor, its state and its uptime figures — never the URL or hostname being checked.

If you operate a site that one of our customers monitors and you want the checks to stop, email [email protected] with the hostname. We stop the monitor and tell the customer.

Plan limits and fair use

Every plan has the limits shown on the pricing page and repeated at checkout: how many monitors you may create, the fastest check interval, how many days of detailed check history are kept, how many verified alert addresses you may add, and whether certificate and domain monitors and a public status page are included. Limits are enforced by the service itself: an extra monitor is refused with an upgrade prompt, a faster interval is rounded to the plan's floor, and history older than the plan's retention is pruned (daily uptime summaries are kept regardless).

On a plan described as unlimited, monitors and alert addresses are not metered and detailed history is kept for 365 days. Unlimited means unlimited for the ordinary use of one customer: we may ask you to reduce usage that is far beyond what a single customer would reasonably need, or that degrades the service for other customers, and we will contact you first wherever that is reasonable. One account is for one customer or organisation; the service may not be resold or shared between organisations.

Alerts

Alerts are sent by email only, and only to addresses that have confirmed they want them: every address you add receives a confirmation link and gets nothing until it is clicked. A recipient who no longer wants alerts can ask the account holder to remove the address, or email [email protected]. The service sends one message when an incident opens, at most one an hour while it continues, never more than six for one incident, and one when it resolves.

General rules

You agree not to use the service for anything unlawful; to interfere with the service or other customers' use of it; to attempt unauthorised access to the service or its infrastructure; to run security testing against the service without our written permission; or to circumvent plan limits.

Enforcement

If an account breaches this policy we may pause its monitors, limit, suspend or end it. We contact the account holder before doing so where that is reasonable, and always afterwards. Fees already paid for a period in which an account is ended for breach are not refunded, except where the law requires otherwise.

Reporting abuse

Email [email protected]. We respond within two business days.

Contact

Acara Crest Inc, 4118 Brookside Oaks, Owings Mills, MD 21117, USA. Email [email protected], phone +1 (888) 814-0965 (Mon–Fri, 9am–6pm).