Uptime tools answer “is the server responding?” Checkout health answers “can a real buyer in this market reach checkout presentation on this device?” Those are different products. Confusing them is how international shops lose revenue with a green status page.

Typical monitor vs Friction Observatory

• Typical: one locale / one URL ping — FO: multi-market audits with baseline vs geo
• Typical: page on first flake — FO: confirmed repeat on shop + market + device
• Typical: no theme regression story — FO: pin baseline, compare after deploy
• Typical: silent retries — FO: visible self-healing history
• Typical: one shop at a time — FO: Agency portfolio, white-label PDFs, peer benchmarks