Platform

Alerts & Issues

Cronitor's alert system ensures you're promptly notified when issues occur with your monitors. Alerts are what users sign up for - to be notified when their cron jobs, websites, services, or APIs fail.

When a monitor detects an issue, Cronitor automatically opens an Issue and sends Alerts to the recipients specified in your Notification Lists. Here's how these components work together:

Alerts

Alerts are the notifications Cronitor sends when a monitor fails or an assertion is violated. Recovery alerts are also sent when a monitor returns to a "healthy" state. All alerts contain:

  • Issue context - Direct link to the open issue with full details
  • Monitor information - Which specific monitor failed and error details
  • Failure description - What went wrong and when it happened
  • Recovery status - Whether the issue is ongoing or resolved
  • Action links - Quick access to pause alerts, view history, or manage the monitor

Example alert notification showing monitor failure details

Issues

Issues are Cronitor's incident management hub - they help your team coordinate response when monitors fail - issues automatically open when monitors fail and close when they recover, creating a complete incident timeline your team can reference and learn from. Each issue provides:

  • Team coordination - See who's been notified and track investigation progress
  • Alert visibility - View which team members received notifications and when
  • Shared context - Centralized place for error details, monitor history, and resolution notes
  • Status page publishing - One-click sharing to keep customers informed during outages
  • Persistent tracking - Issues remain accessible for post-incident review and documentation
  • Severity management - Categorize impact level and assign ownership to team members

Issues list showing various monitor failures and their current status

Notification Lists

Notification Lists are reusable collections of alert recipients that you can apply to multiple monitors. They support:

  • Email addresses - Send detailed alerts to any email
  • SMS numbers - Text message alerts for urgent issues
  • Alert integrations - Slack, PagerDuty, Teams, Discord, and more

All accounts have a default notification list. Monitors without specific alert preferences automatically use this list.

  • Create new lists for different teams or alert types
  • View recipient counts and which monitors use each list
  • Edit or remove lists with easy-to-use controls
  • See usage statistics showing how many monitors are attached

Notification Lists management interface showing different alert groups

Integrations

Detailed setup instructions for popular integrations:

ServiceDescription
SlackSend alerts to channels or direct messages with rich formatting and action buttons
Microsoft TeamsDeliver alerts to Teams channels with embedded monitor details and quick actions
DiscordPost formatted alerts to Discord servers with customizable webhooks
Google ChatSend alerts to Google Workspace Chat spaces using webhooks
TelegramReceive alerts via Telegram bot in direct messages or group chats
LarkDeliver alerts to LarkSuite channels using custom bot integrations
PagerDutyCreate incidents with automatic escalation, on-call routing, and resolution tracking
OpsGenieTrigger OpsGenie alerts with intelligent routing and escalation policies
Splunk On-CallRoute alerts through Splunk On-Call with timeline integration and team coordination
WebhooksSend custom HTTP requests to any endpoint with flexible payload formatting

Configuring Alerts

1. Create integrations

Navigate to Settings > Integrations to connect your preferred services.

Once configured, these integrations can be added to any Notification List for reuse across multiple monitors.

Popular integration types include:

  • Chat platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Discord
  • Incident management tools like PagerDuty, OpsGenie, and Splunk
  • Communication services like Telegram and email
  • Custom webhooks for your own systems
Integration options showing available services like Slack, PagerDuty, Teams, Discord and more

2. Create Notification Lists

Go to Settings > Alerts to manage your notification lists:

  1. Click Create Notification List
  2. Add a name and unique key
  3. Select recipients: emails, phone numbers, and integrations
  4. Choose which environments the list should be active in

Notification list creation interface

3. Attach Lists to Monitors

When creating or editing a monitor, specify which notification lists should receive alerts. You can:

  • Select existing notification lists
  • Add individual email addresses or phone numbers
  • Use different lists for different types of alerts

Monitor alert configuration interface

Sending Test Alerts

To verify your alert setup is working correctly, create a test heartbeat monitor and use its telemetry URL to trigger alerts:

1. Create a Test Monitor

Create a new heartbeat monitor and configure it with the notification list you want to test.

2. Send a Normal Ping

Copy the telemetry URL from your new monitor and paste it into your browser. Hit enter to send a normal "healthy" ping. This initializes the monitor and confirms it's working.

3. Trigger a Failure Alert

Add ?state=fail to the end of the telemetry URL and hit enter. For example:

https://cronitor.io/p/API_KEY/test-alert?state=fail

This simulates a monitor failure and triggers an alert to all recipients in your notification lists. Wait for the alert to arrive via your configured channels.

4. Send a Recovery Alert

Remove the ?state=fail parameter from the URL and hit enter again. This sends a recovery ping, which will trigger a recovery alert letting your team know the "issue" has been resolved.

API Resources

Manage alerts programmatically using our APIs:

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