Setting Up Alerts

Create notification destinations, choose which events each one receives, and assign them to monitors

Alerts are delivered through notification destinations. A destination is one channel (an email address, a Slack channel, a webhook URL, a Telegram chat or a Pushover account) with its own list of events. You assign destinations to monitors, and a destination can be shared by many monitors.

Monitor  ->  Destinations  ->  You

Supported destination types

Type	What you provide	Guide
Email	An email address (verified before use)	Email
Slack	A Slack workspace and channel (OAuth), or an Incoming Webhook URL	Slack
Webhook	An HTTPS URL, method (POST or PUT), optional headers	Webhooks
Telegram	A Telegram chat, connected by messaging the UptimeIO bot	Telegram
Pushover	Your Pushover user key (and optionally an application token)	Pushover

Create a destination

1. Open Destinations

   Click Destinations in the sidebar, then Add Destination.

2. Choose the type and configure it

   Enter a descriptive name (for example Production Slack) and the type-specific details from the guide above.

3. Choose the events

   Toggle the events this destination should receive (see the table below). At least one event must be enabled. All events are enabled by default.

4. Verify and test

   Email destinations must be verified before they receive alerts. Use Test on any destination to send a test notification.

Events

Event preferences are set separately on each destination. A destination receives only the events enabled on it.

Event	Sent when
Monitor goes down	An incident opens after failures are confirmed from multiple locations.
Monitor recovers	The incident resolves.
SSL certificate warnings	A certificate is nearing expiry (30, 15, 7 or 1 days).
Domain expiry warnings	A domain registration is nearing expiry (30, 15, 7 or 1 days).
Response time exceeds threshold	A slow-response incident opens.
Response time returns to normal	The slow-response incident resolves.

DNS monitor failures are delivered as regular “Monitor goes down” and “Monitor recovers” events.

Assign destinations to a monitor

1. Open the monitor's settings

   Create a new monitor, or edit an existing one.

2. Select destinations

   In the Notifications section, tick the destinations that should receive this monitor’s alerts.

3. Save

   Save the monitor.

A monitor with no destination assigned raises incidents but notifies nobody. The dashboard shows a reminder banner when you have no destinations.

Certificate and domain expiry warnings

These two warnings are sent to your destinations without opening an incident.

• SSL certificate expiry: warnings 30, 15, 7 and 1 days before expiry (default: 7 and 1). Choose which thresholds you want per monitor. An expired or invalid certificate opens an incident instead; see Understanding Incidents.
• Domain expiry: warnings 30, 15, 7 and 1 days before expiry (default: all four). Available on HTTP, keyword and DNS monitors whose target is a publicly registered domain. IP addresses and internal names are not supported. Some country-code domains do not publish an expiry date; those show “not published” and never warn.

Both warnings are controlled by the SSL certificate warnings and Domain expiry warnings events on each destination.

Example setups

Solo developer

• Email [e-mail], all events.

Small team

• Email [e-mail], all events (audit trail).
• Slack #monitoring, events: goes down, recovers.

Critical production

• Email [e-mail], all events.
• Slack #production, events: goes down, recovers.
• Pushover for on-call, events: goes down only.
• Webhook to your incident tooling, all events.

Test your alerts

1. Test the destination

   Use Test on the destination. Email destinations are limited to 3 test emails per day per destination.

2. Test end to end

   Point a test monitor at a URL you can make fail, or set its expected status code to one the page does not return, and confirm that the alert arrives. Then restore the settings.

3. Check delivery

   Open an incident and look at Notification delivery to see whether each notification was sent, failed or is pending.

Troubleshooting

Not receiving email alerts

1. The destination is verified (a pending destination receives nothing).
2. Check spam or junk.
3. The destination is assigned to the monitor.
4. The relevant event is enabled on the destination.

Slack messages not appearing

1. Re-run the connection from the destination if Slack reports an authorisation error.
2. For private channels, invite the UptimeIO app to the channel.
3. The relevant event is enabled on the destination.

Receiving too many notifications

1. Turn off events you do not act on, such as “Response time returns to normal”.
2. Use separate destinations for different urgency.
3. Raise the interval on non-critical monitors.

Next steps

Notifications Overview

Delivery, retries and message content

Understanding Incidents

When alerts fire