Notifications: who, when and by which channel
Pingsured notifies you when something changes about a ping: when it goes down, when it is back up, when a certificate is replaced. Who hears about it, on which events and by which channel is set by subscriptions. A subscription connects a recipient — a member of the account, or a webhook — with a channel and the events it notifies on.
Subscriptions live in two places. The account's defaults cover every ping; owners and managers set them under Settings → Notifications. Each ping's own page has a Notifications section that lists its effective recipients and lets you add subscriptions for that ping alone.
Who gets notified
The account's members are notified, each through a subscription of their own, and so are the account's webhooks. Nobody is notified because of their role: a manager without a subscription hears nothing. A new account starts with one subscription, for the owner, by email, covering every ping.
Effective recipients on a ping's page shows who is notified about that ping, by which channel, and whether through the account default or through a subscription on the ping itself.
- Account defaults cover every ping in the account. Owners and managers set them for any member.
- A subscription on a ping replaces that member's account default for that channel on that ping — to hear about every failed check of one critical ping, for example. The other members' defaults still apply to it.
- Who can subscribe whom. Every member, viewers included, can subscribe themselves to a ping with Subscribe me via email and change their own subscriptions. Owners and managers can subscribe other members and add webhooks.
- People outside the account cannot be subscribed by email, and neither can someone invited who has not accepted yet. To reach an on-call rota, a shared inbox or a chat channel, use a webhook.
- A member who belongs to several accounts sees the account's name in the subject of each alarm email, and its button opens the ping in the right account.
When you are notified
A subscription lists the events it notifies on, its triggers:
| Trigger | Notifies when |
|---|---|
| First error | the ping starts failing |
| First warning | the ping starts showing a warning |
| First ok | the ping is OK again after an error or a warning |
| Certificate changed | a TLS check sees a different certificate |
| Any error, Any warning, Any ok | every check with that result |
| First unknown, Any unknown | we could not check the ping |
The recommended set is First error, First ok and Certificate changed: you hear when something breaks, when it is fixed, and when a certificate is replaced. The owner's subscription in a new account starts with exactly these.
A change of state is sent at once. The Any triggers notify on every matching check, not only on a change, so they can be noisy: repeat notifications for the same ping and channel are held back for 15 minutes. Unknown says something about our side rather than your site, which is why it is not in the recommended set.
When a ping counts as failing
Whether a ping "starts failing" is decided by the alarm threshold: "fire after M failing checks out of the last N". With 1 of 1, the default, a single failed check is enough. With 3 of 5, a single slow or dropped response is not, and an outage is still reported once three of five checks have seen it. Both numbers go up to 50.
The page shows what that means in time. With a ping checked every 5 minutes, 3 of 5 notifies between 15 and 25 minutes after a failure starts, depending on how steadily it fails.
The recovery threshold works the same way for checks that pass. It is the same as the alarm threshold unless you switch off Same as alarm; a recovery threshold of 2 of 2, for example, keeps a site that comes back for one check and fails again from sending you an all-clear in between.
What counts:
- A check that fails is an error. A warning comes from TLS checks only: a certificate inside its warning period, or a finding of its configuration. Both count as failing, and a ping moves from warning to error, or back, by the alarm threshold.
- Checks are counted per check interval. A result we could not get — the check ran out of time on our side or did not run — is unknown: it counts neither as failing nor as passing, and on its own never changes a ping's state.
- Each location is judged on its own, with the ping's threshold, and a ping fails when it fails from any of its locations. One location losing its route to your site is enough to notify you; the others still reaching it do not hide it.
- A ping whose locations take turns has no threshold: each location's latest result decides.
The threshold belongs to the ping, not to a subscription: everyone subscribed to a ping is notified at the same moment. A ping without subscriptions of its own uses the account's threshold. A ping with subscriptions of its own has its own threshold, shown and changed in its Notifications section; it starts from the account's when the first one is added. Owners and managers can change a threshold.
By which channel
| Channel | Plans | Where the notification arrives |
|---|---|---|
| every plan | the member's own email address | |
| On web | every plan | Notifications in the app's user menu, counted on its badge and updated live while the app is open |
| Webhook | Team and above | an HTTPS address of your choice; see the page on webhook alerts |
A webhook is added by an owner or a manager, for the account or for one ping, and Send test posts a test notification to it at once. An account can have several webhooks — an incident tool and a chat channel, say, each with its own triggers — and a ping's own webhooks add to the account's. A ping webhook with the same address as an account webhook replaces that one for the ping.
Stopping notifications
Each alarm email ends in Unsubscribe from alerts for this ping. It stops your alarm emails for that ping, and that ping only: your account default still covers the others. To subscribe again, use the ping's page. I should not have received this tells us an email was not meant for you.
To stop every alarm email from an account, switch off Alarm emails under My email preferences (Notifications in the user menu). Notifications on web keep arriving there.
When a member leaves the account, their subscriptions go with them.
Not available yet
- Notifications by SMS, and notifications sent straight into a chat tool. An automation platform between a webhook and the chat tool covers the second today.