Alerts explained

UptimeVitals emails you when something changes, and records every event as an incident. There are two kinds of mail: incident alerts (this article) and the Monday digest (see Digest and email preferences).

What triggers an alert

• Downtime: two consecutive failed uptime checks — one failed check alone never alerts, so a single blip doesn't wake you.
• DNS change: the domain's DNS records differ from the last snapshot.
• Email-auth degradation: SPF, DKIM, or DMARC got weaker or broke.
• Blacklist: the domain or its mail IP appeared on a monitored blacklist.
• SSL expiry: the certificate expires within 30 days.
• Domain expiry: the domain itself expires within 14 days.

Where alerts go

To your alert email (Settings → Profile), or your account email if you left alert email blank. Every alert is also recorded: the Incidents page lists your last 100 across all sites, and each site's detail page shows its last 10.

When one arrives

1. Open the site's detail page and find the check card that changed — its summary says what broke.
2. For downtime, check whether the site loads for you. If it does, the likeliest cause is a firewall or Cloudflare rule blocking automated checks — see Site shows down but loads fine.
3. For email-auth or DNS alerts, compare with your last intentional change (host move, new email provider, DNS edit) — most alerts trace to one of those.
4. Fix the cause, then click Run check now on the detail page to confirm the check goes green.

Can I turn alerts off?

There is no global "turn off alerts" switch, by design: a monitoring tool that can be silenced by accident is worse than none. To stop alerts for one site, remove that site from your dashboard — which also deletes its history. The Monday digest can be switched off separately without touching alerts.