Configure alert policies to receive notifications via email, Slack, and webhooks when synthetic checks fail. Set triggers, recovery alerts, and escalations.

supaguard's alerting system ensures the right people know about issues at the right time. Combined with Smart Retries and Failure Classification, alerts are accurate, actionable, and noise-free.

How Alerting Works

When a check fails, supaguard follows this lifecycle:

Execution — Check runs from a monitoring region
Smart Retry — If it fails, supaguard automatically re-runs from a different region
Classification — Failure is classified as Critical, Degraded, or Healthy
Policy Evaluation — Your alert policy rules are evaluated
Notification — Alerts are sent to configured channels
Recovery — When the check passes again, recovery notifications are sent

Overview

supaguard's alerting system notifies you when:

A check fails and the failure is confirmed across regions
A check recovers after a period of failure
A check has been failing for an extended period (escalation)

Alert Policies

Alert policies define how and when you receive notifications.

Creating an Alert Policy

Navigate to Alert Policies in your dashboard
Click Create Policy
Configure the policy settings (see table below)

Policy Settings

Setting	Description	Recommendation
Name	A descriptive name for the policy	Use severity-based naming (e.g., "Critical — Page On-Call")
Channels	Where to send notifications	Start with Slack, add PagerDuty for critical flows
Trigger	When to send alerts	"After 2 failures" for most checks
Recovery	Notify when check recovers	Always enable — know when issues resolve
Escalation	Escalate if unresolved	Add PagerDuty after 15 minutes

Alert Channels

supaguard supports multiple notification channels. Use them together for layered alerting.

Email

Send alerts to one or more email addresses. Best for individual notifications and daily digests.

{
  "type": "email",
  "recipients": ["alerts@example.com", "team@example.com"]
}

Slack

Send alerts to a Slack channel for team-wide visibility. Slack is the most popular alerting channel for engineering teams.

Connect supaguard to your Slack workspace (see Slack Integration)
Choose the channel for alerts
Customize the message format

[!TIP] Use separate Slack channels for different severity levels: #alerts-critical for pages, #alerts-monitoring for warnings.

PagerDuty

Integrate with PagerDuty for on-call escalation and incident management. See PagerDuty Integration for setup details.

Webhooks

Send alerts to any HTTP endpoint for custom integrations.

{
  "type": "webhook",
  "url": "https://your-service.com/alerts",
  "headers": {
    "Authorization": "Bearer your-token"
  }
}

See Webhooks Integration for payload format and advanced configuration.

Alert Lifecycle

Understanding the full alert lifecycle helps you configure policies effectively:

Stage	What Happens	Your Action
Triggered	Check failed, alert sent	Investigate the failure
Acknowledged	Team member sees the alert	Begin diagnosis
Investigating	Using debugging tools	Watch video, check traces
Resolved	Issue fixed, check passes	Recovery notification sent

Best Practices

Use meaningful names — Make it easy to identify which alert fired and its severity level
Avoid alert fatigue — Set appropriate thresholds before alerting. Use "after 2 failures" as default
Test your channels — Send test notifications before going live to verify delivery
Set up escalation — Have a backup channel for critical alerts that go unacknowledged
Review regularly — Audit alert volume monthly. High-frequency alerts signal test maintenance needs
Combine with Smart Retries — supaguard verifies failures from multiple regions before alerting, reducing false alarms by 99%

Next Steps

Configuring Alerts — Detailed policy setup and escalation rules
Slack Integration — Connect your workspace
PagerDuty Integration — On-call alerting
Webhook Integration — Custom alert destinations

Alerting Guide: Notifications for Check Failures