Alerts tell you when a site's emails stop working, and again once they're fixed. Setting them up takes two steps:
- Set up your channels (email, Slack and webhook) once, on the Notifications page within EmailSendCheck.com.
- Choose which of those channels each site's alerts go to.
When alerts are sent
- Failing: a test failed. You get one after every failed test until it's fixed, so a problem can't be missed.
- Unreachable: we couldn't reach the site to run the test, for example because a firewall blocked us. Also sent after every test until it's fixed.
- Recovered: the site passed again after a failing or unreachable alert. Sent once.
Manual tests (Run test now) send alerts the same way, so a fix confirmed with a manual test sends the recovery straight away.
Warnings never send an alert. The emails are still arriving, so a warning is something to fix soon rather than an emergency, and an alert after every test until it's fixed would bury the failures. Each new warning is listed once instead: in the daily summary on the Agency plan, or in a weekly email, sent after your weekly check time, on other plans.
Where alerts go
| Channel | Plans | How to set it up |
|---|---|---|
| All plans | Set at first to your sign-up address. You can change it to any address, such as a shared team inbox. A new address gets a link to confirm it first. | |
| Slack | Freelancer and Agency | Click Connect Slack and pick a channel. If your workspace doesn't allow installing apps, paste a Slack incoming-webhook URL instead. |
| Webhook | Agency | Enter an HTTPS URL that accepts a JSON POST. See Webhooks. |
Then choose which channels each site uses, in the Send alerts to section when you add or edit it. The icons in the Notifications column on the Email Checks page show each site's choices. To change many sites at once, select them and use Turn on alerts, Turn off alerts or Set alert timing.
Use Send test alert on the Notifications page to check email or Slack is set up properly (up to 10 an hour). Webhooks have their own Send test event button.
Instant alerts or a daily summary
Each site can send its email and Slack alerts in one of two ways:
- Instant alerts: an alert as soon as a test fails, and again when it passes.
- Daily summary (included in the Agency plan): one message a day listing failing sites, sites working again, and sites with new warnings. It arrives a little after your daily checks have run, so a failure may not be reported until the next day.
A good set-up for agencies is instant alerts for important sites, such as ecommerce or membership sites, and a daily summary for the rest. Webhooks always get every failure and recovery straight away, whatever you choose here.
When a channel stops working
If an alert can't be delivered (an email bounces, the Slack app is removed, or your webhook URL stops answering), we retry it a few times first. If it still doesn't get through, we tell you through every channel that still works, including your login email, and show the problem on your Dashboard and the Notifications page. Your sites keep being tested in the meantime.
If the same channel keeps breaking and recovering by itself, you're told at most once a day. Once you fix it, for example with a new address or URL, or a test that gets through, you'll be told straight away if it breaks again.