Settings & Configuration
A complete reference for every setting available in SiteBrief — what it does, when to use it, and what happens if you change it.
Site settings overview
Each site has its own independent settings. Access them by opening a site's detail page and scrolling to the Settings panel. Changes take effect immediately after saving.
Basic settings
Check interval
How often SiteBrief checks the site. The interval is determined by your plan and applies to all your sites:
| Plan | Check interval |
|---|---|
| Free | 2 minutes |
| Pro | 1 minute |
| Agency | 1 minute |
Environment
Tag each site as Production, Staging, or Development. This is purely a label — it appears in the dashboard and client reports. Monitoring behavior is the same regardless.
Check type
| Type | Use case |
|---|---|
| HTTP / HTTPS | Standard websites and APIs |
| TCP | Any service running on a specific port (mail, database, etc.) |
| DNS | Verify a DNS record matches an expected value |
| Ping | Verify a server is reachable at the network level |
| Heartbeat | Monitor scheduled tasks and cron jobs |
HTTP settings
HTTP method
| Method | When to use |
|---|---|
| GET (default) | All websites — downloads full page body, enables keyword/JSON checks |
| HEAD | Status-only checks (faster, no body downloaded, keyword won't work) |
| POST | API endpoints that require POST (set request body below) |
Request body
Only used with the POST method. Enter the raw body to send with each check request. Accepts any text — JSON, form data, XML, etc.
Example for a JSON API health check:
{"action": "ping", "key": "your-api-key"}Keyword
A text string that must appear in the page response body. If the keyword is missing, the check fails even if the HTTP status is 200. See Keyword monitoring for full details.
JSON assertion
For JSON API endpoints — enter a dot-notation path and expected value. Format: path.to.field = expected_value
Example: status = ok — passes if the JSON response contains {"status":"ok"}
Response time threshold
If a check takes longer than this many milliseconds, the site status changes to Degradedand an alert is sent. Leave empty to disable response time alerting.
Recommended values:
| Site type | Suggested threshold |
|---|---|
| Marketing site | 3000 ms (3 seconds) |
| E-commerce store | 2000 ms (2 seconds) |
| SaaS app | 1500 ms (1.5 seconds) |
| API endpoint | 500 ms |
Reliability settings
Dual confirmation
When enabled, SiteBrief requires two consecutive failed checks before marking a site as down and sending an alert. This eliminates false positives from brief network blips.
- Enabled: fewer false alerts, but 1 check interval of extra delay before alerting
- Disabled: instant alerting on first failure (recommended for Agency/Pro plans with short intervals)
Maintenance pause
Pause all monitoring for this site until a specific date and time. While paused:
- No checks are performed
- No alerts are sent
- Uptime stats don't accumulate downtime
Monitoring resumes automatically when the pause expires.
Advanced monitoring
Blacklist monitoring
Toggle on to enable daily blacklist/RBL checks for this site's domain. Available on Agency and Agency Pro plans. See Blacklist monitoring for full details.
Broken links check
Toggle on to enable the broken links panel on the site detail page. The crawl runs on-demand when you click "Scan now". Available on Agency and Agency Pro plans.
TCP & DNS settings
TCP port
Only used when check type is TCP. Enter the port number to monitor (e.g. 443, 3306, 587).
DNS record type
Only used when check type is DNS. Choose the record type to query: A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, or TXT.
DNS expected value
The value that the DNS record should resolve to. If the actual value differs, the check fails.
| Record type | Example expected value |
|---|---|
| A | 104.21.55.123 |
| CNAME | mysite.netlify.app |
| MX | 10 mail.example.com |
| TXT | v=spf1 include:example.com ~all |
Client & reporting settings
Client email
The email address where monitoring reports are sent. One email address per site. Set this to your client's primary contact email.
Client name
The client's name, used in the greeting line of report emails ("Hi Sarah,"). Also appears on the report PDF header.
Alert webhook URL
A URL that SiteBrief POSTs a JSON payload to when an alert event occurs. See Alerts documentation for the payload format.
Use this to connect to Slack, Discord, Telegram, or any custom alerting system.