How to Monitor Documenso with Vigilmon (Health Checks, Signing Jobs, and SSL Alerts)

Documenso is an open-source alternative to DocuSign that lets you collect legally binding e-signatures without relying on a third-party SaaS. When you self-host Documenso, you control the data and the availability — but that means you're also responsible for knowing when the signing workflow breaks.

A down Documenso instance means contracts sit unsigned, customers can't complete onboarding, and your sales team has no visibility into what went wrong. This tutorial shows you how to set up reliable monitoring for a self-hosted Documenso instance using Vigilmon.

Why monitoring matters for Documenso

Documenso has several layers that can fail independently:

• The Next.js web app — the main signing interface. If it goes down, signers see a blank page or error instead of the document they were invited to sign.
• Background signing jobs — Documenso processes certificate issuance, email delivery, and audit log writes asynchronously. A background worker failure means signed documents don't get their audit trails, and signers don't receive confirmation emails.
• PostgreSQL database — all documents, signature requests, and audit records live here. A connection failure makes every API call return 500.
• Email delivery — Documenso sends invitation and completion emails through your configured SMTP provider. If the provider is misconfigured, the signing flow appears to work but recipients never receive their documents.

Catching these failures early means you can fix them before a customer tries to sign a time-sensitive contract.

What you'll need

• A self-hosted Documenso instance (Docker or Node.js)
• A free Vigilmon account

Step 1: Locate the Documenso health endpoint

Documenso exposes a health endpoint at /api/health. Verify it before setting up your monitor:

curl -i https://sign.your-domain.com/api/health

A healthy Documenso instance returns HTTP 200:

{ "status": "ok" }

If you're behind a reverse proxy, confirm this path is not caught by authentication middleware — the health endpoint should be publicly accessible for monitoring to work correctly.

Step 2: Set up HTTP monitoring in Vigilmon

1. Log in to vigilmon.online and go to Monitors → New Monitor
2. Choose HTTP / HTTPS as the type
3. URL: https://sign.your-domain.com/api/health
4. Check interval: 1 minute
5. Under Expected response:
   • Status code: 200
   • Response body contains: "status":"ok"
6. Save the monitor

Vigilmon probes your health endpoint from multiple regions every minute. A non-200 response or request timeout immediately opens an incident.

Step 3: Monitor the signing UI directly

The health endpoint confirms the API is reachable, but the signing UI has its own rendering pipeline. A broken Next.js page component or a misconfigured CDN can break the signing experience while /api/health still returns 200.

Add a separate HTTP monitor for the signing interface:

1. Add a second HTTP / HTTPS monitor
2. URL: https://sign.your-domain.com
3. Expected status code: 200
4. Assign the same alert channel

This catches blank-page failures and redirect loops that don't affect the API.

Step 4: Watch the document signing API

Documenso's /api/v1/documents endpoint is the core of the signing workflow. Monitoring it with an authenticated request verifies that background jobs are operational and the database is reachable:

1. Add a third HTTP / HTTPS monitor
2. URL: https://sign.your-domain.com/api/v1/documents?page=1&perPage=1
3. Custom headers:
   • Authorization: Bearer your-api-token
4. Expected status code: 200

If this returns 401, your API token has expired. If it returns 500, the database or a background worker has failed. Both conditions trigger a Vigilmon alert.

Step 5: Set up SSL certificate monitoring

E-signature workflows are security-sensitive — any TLS warning in a signer's browser will cause them to abandon the document without signing. A lapsed certificate is catastrophic for a document-signing platform.

1. Go to Monitors → New Monitor
2. Choose SSL Certificate
3. Domain: sign.your-domain.com
4. Alert thresholds: warn at 30 days, critical at 7 days

Vigilmon tracks the certificate expiry date and alerts you with enough lead time to renew without downtime.

Step 6: Configure alert channels and escalation

1. Go to Alert Channels → Add Channel
2. Add a Slack, email, or webhook channel
3. Assign all monitors to the channel

Recommended alert policy for Documenso:

| Severity | Trigger | Action | |----------|---------|--------| | Critical | /api/health down 2+ minutes | Page on-call — active signing sessions are broken | | High | Document API returns 500 | Investigate DB or worker failure | | Medium | SSL cert expires in < 30 days | Ticket for renewal | | Low | UI returns non-200 but API is healthy | Investigate Next.js build or CDN issue |

Monitoring summary

| Monitor | Type | What it catches | |---------|------|-----------------| | https://sign.your-domain.com/api/health | HTTP | API crash, DB failure | | https://sign.your-domain.com | HTTP | UI rendering or CDN failure | | https://sign.your-domain.com/api/v1/documents | HTTP (auth) | Background job failure, API token expiry | | sign.your-domain.com SSL | Certificate | Imminent TLS expiry |

What's next

• Heartbeat monitors — if you run scheduled exports or cleanup cron jobs in Documenso, add a heartbeat monitor so Vigilmon alerts when the job stops reporting in
• Status page — publish a Vigilmon status page so your team can check signing system status without pinging ops

Get started free at vigilmon.online — no credit card, monitors start running in under a minute.