Environments

Environments let you monitor the same service across staging, production, and multiple regions using a single monitor configuration. Keep performance data and alerts separate for each deployment while avoiding the complexity of managing duplicate monitors.

Understanding Environments

The key concept: Environments separate telemetry data, not monitors. You create one monitor, then send telemetry from different deployment environments to that same monitor.

What's Separate	What's Shared
Telemetry history and metrics	Monitor schedules and assertions
Issue tracking and status	Notification lists and integrations
Alerts enabled/disabled settings	Team access and permissions

Environment selector showing staging and production data for the same monitors

How It Works

Create one monitor with your desired schedule and settings
Send telemetry from different environments using the env parameter
View environment-specific data using the environment selector in your dashboard
Configure alerts per environment - enable for production, disable for staging

MONITOR_URL="https://cronitor.link/p/API_KEY/service-heartbeat"

# Production deployment
curl "${MONITOR_URL}?env=production"

# Staging deployment
curl "${MONITOR_URL}?env=staging"

Environment overview showing shared configuration with separate data

Setting Up Environments

Every account starts with a default production environment. When you send telemetry without an env parameter, it automatically goes there.

Automatic creation: New environments are created automatically the first time you send telemetry with a new env parameter.

Manual creation: You can also create environments in advance:

Go to Settings > Environments
Click Create Environment
Enter a name (e.g., "staging", "development")
Choose whether to enable alerts

Environment creation form

Important Limitations

Check Monitors: Uptime/API checks only work in your default environment. They cannot send telemetry to different environments.
Real User Monitoring: Website analytics support environments, but the setup process is different. See our RUM Environments documentation.
Configuration Changes: When you update a monitor's schedule or assertions, the changes apply to all environments since the configuration is shared.