Alerts & on-call

Set up website alerts you can trust

A good alert reaches the right person soon enough to help, without warning them about every brief wobble. Follow these five steps for each saved site.

Set up alerts in five steps

Start with downtime alerts for one important site. Once those are useful, add backup contacts, speed warnings, summaries, and a public status page where they make sense.

1. Decide what counts as down

Open My Sites, choose the site, and find Alerts & automation. Set Alert me only if down for to More than 5 minutes for an ordinary business site.

Why: five minutes filters out many brief restarts and network problems. For a checkout or another critical service, choose 0 or 3 minutes instead.

2. Choose who is told

In My Sites, edit the site and choose Email alerts or App push notifications. On the site's page, leave Delivery on Instant alerts for an important site. Developers can also open Webhooks, add an HTTPS endpoint, and send a test.

Recommended: start with instant email to the person responsible for the site. Add a webhook only when somebody can maintain the receiving service.

3. Add a backup contact

Enter a different person under Escalation contact, then set Escalate after to 10 minutes unacknowledged. Each downtime email has an acknowledgement link. Using it tells WebWatch that somebody is handling the incident.

Why: if nobody acknowledges the alert within ten minutes, WebWatch emails the backup. Do not use the same address for both people.

4. Add speed and certificate warnings

Let the site collect checks for a day or two, then compare its average and P95 response times. If it normally responds well below two seconds, enter 2000 for the Performance budget. Keep the SSL expiry warning at 30 days.

Why: WebWatch warns after three checks in a row exceed the budget, which is more useful than reacting to one slow reply. Raise the budget if two seconds is normal for that site.

5. Use digests and a status page where they help

For a blog, test site, or another lower-priority site, change Delivery to Daily digest email. WebWatch sends a morning summary only when there is something to report. Webhooks still fire immediately. To keep customers informed, open Status Pages, create a page, and select the sites to show.

Recommended: use digests where an immediate response is not needed. Use a public status page for services that customers depend on. See the demo status page.

Test the setup

Check the complete route before relying on it

Confirm that the main contact can receive WebWatch email or push notifications. If you added a webhook, use Send test and check the receiving service. Make sure the backup person knows what an escalation email means and who will update the status page during a real incident.

Need help choosing the numbers?

The performance guide explains average and P95 response times. The uptime guide explains DOWN, TIMEOUT, SSL_ISSUE, and the other status labels.