Updated 2026-09-29
Status delivers alerts through email channels (every plan) and webhook channels (Enterprise); push notifications to our mobile apps are coming soon. Each check can have several channels attached, up to your plan's per-check limit.
Email channels
An email channel is a single address. Before it can receive alerts, it must be verified with a 6-digit code sent to that address — this stops the channel from being used to spam an address that doesn't belong to you. Your plan sets how many email channels you can create.
Webhook channels
A webhook channel posts to a URL you control, with a fully customizable payload. See Customizing webhook payloads and security for the payload template engine, signing, and delivery details. Webhook channels are available on Enterprise, which sets how many you can create. For when to alert, and how often, see Alert policies.
Mobile push (coming soon)
Our mobile apps aren't released yet. Once they are: when a team member signs in to the mobile app and allows notifications, the app creates a personal push channel for their devices. Attach it to checks like any other channel to get a push notification when an incident on that check opens or recovers. Only its owner can change it, from the app. Push notifications are delivered through Google Firebase Cloud Messaging.
Timeout-burst alerts
On top of the down/recovery alerts above, Status can alert you when a check's probe requests keep timing out — even before that's confirmed as a full outage. This is on by default: 5 timeouts within a 300-second (5 minute) window sends a burst alert, separate from the check's normal down/recovery notices. You can turn it off, or change the count and window, in the check's alert policy. It isn't sent while the check already has an open incident.
Slow-response (degraded) alerts
A check can also alert on response-time degradation — when recent response times exceed a threshold you set, for several consecutive runs (3 by default) — which is a different signal from a check going down. See Why is my check flapping? for how this differs from flapping between up and down.
Attaching channels to checks
A channel isn't useful until it's attached to at least one check. Each check can have multiple channels attached, up to a plan-dependent limit (see the pricing page); attach them when you create or edit the check.
A check with no channels attached still records incidents in its history — the check's own page just shows a notice that no alerts are configured for it.
When alerts don't go out immediately
If your account has sent a lot of alert emails within the last hour, further individual emails are folded into a single digest for the rest of that hour instead of flooding your inbox, then a summary email goes out once the window rolls over. Webhooks are not subject to this — a webhook channel is the right choice if you need every event delivered individually at volume.
When a channel stops firing
Webhook deliveries time out after 10 seconds. A 5xx response or timeout is retried twice, after 1 minute and then 5 minutes (3 attempts in all); a 4xx response isn't retried. Every channel has a Send test button, and its last 100 delivery attempts are listed with the response.
If a webhook channel fails 10 delivery attempts in a row, Status disables it automatically, emails the account's contact email (or the Owner, if no contact email is set), and logs the event — this protects your systems from a broken receiver silently swallowing every alert. The dashboard shows the disabled state along with the last error, and re-enabling it is one click. See Why didn't I get notified? if you think this may have happened to you.