Email Notifications

Overview

Email notifications are the foundation of alerting in StatusApp. Emails are HTML-formatted and include all relevant context about monitor status changes and incidents.

Setting Up Email Notifications

1. Go to Settings → Notification Channels
2. Click Create Channel
3. Select Email
4. Enter a channel name (e.g., "Ops Team Email", "Critical Alerts")
5. Enter recipient email addresses (comma-separated)
6. Click Send Test to verify
7. Click Save

Configuration

Channel Name

• Use descriptive names for easy identification
• Examples: "Production Alerts", "Team Email", "Critical Only"

Recipient Emails

• Enter multiple addresses separated by commas
• Example: ops@company.com, alerts@company.com, oncall@company.com
• Supports distribution lists and group emails
• No limit on number of recipients

Email Content

Each email includes:

• Subject: Clear indication of issue and monitor name
• Status: Current monitor status with color coding
• Monitor Details: Name, URL, type, and region
• Timing: When the issue started and current duration
• Metrics: Response time, error details
• Action Links: Direct links to the dashboard and monitor
• Professional HTML Format: Easy to read with styling

What Triggers Emails

• Monitor status changes to DOWN
• Monitor status changes to UP (recovery)
• Monitor status changes to DEGRADED
• Performance regressions detected
• SSL certificate expiration warnings (15, 7, and 1 day before)
• Multi-region outages
• New incidents created
• Incident resolution

Best Practices

Organization

• Create separate channels for severity levels

  • "Critical Alerts" → Production monitors only
  • "Standard Alerts" → All production monitors
  • "Development" → Non-production environments

• Use distribution lists

  • oncall@company.com instead of individual emails
  • Easier to update without changing channel configuration
  • Scales as team grows

• Document your setup

  • Keep a list of what each email channel covers
  • Share with team in runbooks
  • Update as systems change

Testing

• Always test when creating a new channel
• Re-test after configuration changes
• Include email tests in on-call rotation changes
• Check spam/junk folders if emails aren't arriving

Reducing Noise

• Assign only truly important monitors to each email channel
• Use multiple channels for different severity levels
• Configure multi-region thresholds (alert only if 2+ regions fail)
• Set confirmation checks (2-3 failures before alerting)

Assigning to Monitors

Per-Monitor Assignment

1. Create or edit a monitor
2. Go to Notifications section
3. Select your email channel
4. Can choose multiple channels
5. Save the monitor

Bulk Assignment

1. Go to Monitors list
2. Select multiple monitors with checkboxes
3. Click Bulk Actions → Assign Notification Channels
4. Choose your email channel
5. Apply changes

Troubleshooting

Not Receiving Emails

Check Channel Configuration:

• Verify recipient email addresses are correct
• Test the channel (button in channel settings)
• Confirm channel is assigned to the monitor

Check Email Delivery:

• Look in spam/junk folder
• Allowlist emails from mail.statusapp.io
• Check email for any bounce/delivery failure notices
• Ask a colleague if they received it

Check Monitor Status:

• Confirm the monitor is actually failing
• Verify the monitor is active (not paused)
• Check if it meets confirmation check thresholds

Too Many Emails

Reduce Frequency:

• Increase confirmation check threshold (2-3 failures before alert)
• Consolidate related monitors into single channel
• Use separate channel for non-critical monitors
• Set multi-region threshold (require 2+ regions down)

Emails Delayed

Causes:

• High alert volume
• Email provider delays
• Network issues

Solutions:

• Check StatusApp status page
• Contact your email provider
• Check if other alerts are arriving

Integration with Other Alerts

Email works well combined with:

• Slack: Quick notifications in chat + detailed emails for records
• SMS: Email for full context + SMS for on-call urgency
• PagerDuty: Email for team awareness + PagerDuty for escalation

Next Steps

• Learn about Slack notifications
• Set up SMS alerts for critical monitors
• Explore PagerDuty integration for on-call management
• Return to Notification Channels Overview