Alerts & Notifications

IonHour sends alerts when your checks change status — going down, running late, or recovering. You configure alert channels at the workspace level, and all checks in the workspace use those channels.

Alert Channels

An alert channel is a destination where IonHour sends notifications. Each workspace can have multiple channels, and each channel can be independently enabled or disabled.

Supported Channel Types

Type	Status	How it works
Email	Available	Sends emails via Postmark to configured addresses
Slack	Available	Posts messages to a Slack channel via incoming webhook

Additional channel types (WhatsApp, Microsoft Teams, Discord, SMS) are planned for future releases.

Email Alerts

Email is the simplest notification channel. You configure a list of recipient email addresses, and IonHour sends an email whenever an alert is triggered.

Setting Up Email

1. Navigate to Settings > Alerts in your workspace.
2. Click Add Channel and select Email.
3. Enter the recipient email addresses.
4. Save the channel.

Per-User Preferences

Individual users can opt out of email notifications in their profile settings. When a user disables email notifications:

• They are removed from the recipient list for email channels.
• Shared/external email addresses (not tied to a user account) are unaffected.

This lets teams use a shared inbox (e.g., [email protected]) that always receives alerts, while individual team members can control their own notification volume.

Slack Alerts

Slack alerts post messages directly to a Slack channel using an incoming webhook. The integration uses Slack's OAuth flow — no manual webhook URL configuration required.

Setting Up Slack

1. Navigate to Settings > Alerts in your workspace.
2. Click Add Channel and select Slack.
3. You'll be redirected to Slack to authorize the connection.
4. Choose the Slack channel where alerts should be posted.
5. Authorize and you'll be redirected back to IonHour.

The Slack channel is now connected and will receive alerts immediately. You can verify the connection by clicking Test on the channel to send a test message.

What Triggers Alerts

IonHour sends alerts for these events:

Check Status Changes

Event	Subject Line	When
Check goes DOWN	[ionhour] name is DOWN	Check has been down long enough to trigger an incident
Check is LATE	[ionhour] name is LATE	A ping is overdue but still within the failure threshold
Check recovers	[ionhour] name is back UP	Check returns to OK after being down, includes downtime duration

Dependency Impact

Event	Subject Line	When
Dependency down	[ionhour] name impacted by dependency	A check's dependency is reported as unavailable

Outbound Check Alerts

Event	Subject Line	When
Latency breach	[IonHour] name latency breach (actualms > thresholdms)	Response time exceeds the configured latency warning threshold
SSL expiring	[IonHour] name SSL certificate expires in N day(s)	SSL certificate is within the expiry warning window

Latency and SSL alerts have a 1-hour cooldown per check. If the condition persists, you'll receive a reminder every hour rather than on every probe.

Alert Content

Each alert includes contextual information to help you respond quickly:

Down alerts include:

• Time of the last successful signal
• When the next signal was expected
• 24-hour uptime percentage (when available)
• Link to the incidents page

Recovery alerts include:

• Total downtime duration (from incident start to resolution)
• Time of recovery
• Current uptime percentage

Latency alerts include:

• Measured latency vs. configured threshold
• How much the latency exceeds the limit

SSL alerts include:

• Days remaining until expiry
• Exact expiry date

Testing Channels

After setting up a channel, use the Test button to send a test notification. This verifies that:

• Email delivery is working and reaching the right inboxes.
• Slack webhook is valid and posting to the correct channel.

We recommend testing after any configuration change.

Managing Channels

Enable / Disable

You can temporarily disable a channel without deleting it. Disabled channels don't receive any alerts. This is useful during maintenance windows or when you want to silence a specific channel without losing its configuration.

Muting Individual Checks

If a specific check is noisy, you can mute notifications on that check instead of disabling an entire channel. Muted checks won't trigger alerts regardless of their status, but incidents are still created and tracked.

Muting is configured per-check in the check settings, not at the channel level.

Best Practices

• Use both email and Slack. Email provides a reliable, searchable record. Slack provides real-time team visibility. They complement each other.
• Set up a shared inbox. Use a team email address (e.g., [email protected]) that always receives alerts, even if individual team members have notifications disabled.
• Test after setup. Always send a test notification after configuring a channel. A misconfigured channel that silently drops alerts is worse than no channel at all.
• Don't mute — fix. If you're muting a check because it's too noisy, the check's schedule or grace period probably needs tuning. Muting should be temporary, not a permanent workaround.
• Review alert fatigue. If your team is ignoring alerts, you have too many. Tighten your thresholds, increase grace periods, or raise the consecutive failure count on outbound checks.