Real-time alerting requires three things: a monitor checking your site frequently, a notification channel it can reach you on, and a sensible escalation policy so alerts don’t get missed or ignored.
Setting it up
- Add your URL to a monitoring tool with a check interval of 1–5 minutes
- Connect at least two notification channels (e.g. email + SMS, or email + Slack) so a single channel outage doesn’t leave you blind
- Set a "confirmation" threshold (e.g. alert only after 2 consecutive failed checks) to avoid false positives from one-off network blips
- Add a second responder or on-call rotation if more than one person maintains the site
FAQ
Why did I get an alert for a site that looks fine to me?
Your browser may have cached the page, or the outage may be regional/ISP-specific — check from another network before dismissing the alert as a false positive.