Alerts & Notifications

What triggers an alert

Alert channels

Email alerts

Email alerts are sent to the email address registered on your SiteBrief account. Each alert email contains:

• Site name and URL
• What happened (down / recovered / SSL expiring)
• The HTTP status code or error message
• Timestamp of the event
• Direct link to the site detail page in SiteBrief

Recovery emails include the downtime duration — how long the site was unavailable.

Webhook alerts

Webhooks send a JSON payload via HTTP POST to any URL you configure in site settings. Use webhooks to integrate with any system: Slack, Discord, Telegram, your own backend, PagerDuty, or a custom alerting pipeline.

Webhook payload format:

{
  "event": "site_down",
  "site": {
    "id": "uuid-here",
    "name": "Acme Corp",
    "url": "https://acmecorp.com",
    "environment": "production"
  },
  "check": {
    "status": "down",
    "status_code": 503,
    "response_time_ms": null,
    "error": "Service Unavailable",
    "checked_at": "2026-05-13T14:32:00Z"
  }
}

Event types in the payload:

Setting up Slack

Option A — Slack Webhook (simple, no Slack app required):

• Go to api.slack.com/apps → Create New App → From Scratch
• Enable "Incoming Webhooks" and click "Add New Webhook to Workspace"
• Choose a channel and copy the https://hooks.slack.com/services/... URL
• Paste it into Integrations → Slack (Webhook)

Option B — Slack Bot (recommended, pick any channel dynamically):

• Go to api.slack.com/apps → Create New App → add chat:write Bot Token Scope
• Install to workspace and copy the xoxb-... Bot Token
• Run /invite @YourBot in the target channel
• Add Bot Token + channel name in Integrations → Slack Bot

Setting up Microsoft Teams

SiteBrief uses the new Teams Workflows webhook with Adaptive Cards:

• In Teams, go to the channel → Workflows → "Post to a channel when a webhook request is received"
• Complete the setup and copy the generated URL
• Paste it into Integrations → Microsoft Teams

Alert Escalation

If a site stays down and you need to notify a secondary contact (e.g. a manager or on-call engineer), configure Alert Escalation in Integrations:

• Set a secondary email to notify
• Set escalate after N minutes of continuous downtime

The escalation fires once per downtime event — you won't get spammed.

Alert fatigue — what NOT to do

• Don't add the same webhook URL to 20+ sites — you'll get flooded during a hosting outage affecting multiple clients
• Don't use personal phone SMS for non-critical staging sites
• Do use dual confirmation on sites that occasionally have brief blips
• Do set a maintenance pause before planned downtime windows

Frequently asked questions