Which apps do I need to run "Watch your websites for downtime"?

This template uses Google Sheets, Slack and Gmail. Authenticate each one once from your workspace and the workflow is ready to run. There is no glue code to write or maintain.

Can I customize "Watch your websites for downtime"?

Yes. Once the template is in your workspace it is an ordinary workflow: open it in the builder and change any step, schedule, or condition, or add steps of your own.

All workflows

Watch your websites for downtime

Engineering & DevOps

Checks every site listed in a spreadsheet on a schedule and alerts you in Slack or by email when one goes down or recovers.

Add to Workspace

Browse all workflows

Every 15 minutes3 apps6 steps

Apps it connects

Authenticate each one once and the workflow is ready to run.

Google Sheets

Slack

Gmail

What it does

Each integration step this workflow runs, in order, what it is for, and the conditions and loops that decide when it runs.

1Google SheetsRead rowsReads the 'Sites' tab for the list to check, and the 'Status log' tab for each site's last recorded state.
If a step fails
1. 2Google SheetsCreate tabCreates the 'Status log' tab in your spreadsheet on the first run, when no log exists yet.
If not logHasHeader
1. 3Google SheetsAppend rowWrites the log headings once, then records the time, URL, new status and detail each time a site changes state.
For each site
1. If currentStatus is not lastStatus
  4Google SheetsAppend row
  If alertSubject is not empty
  If alertSlackChannelId is not empty
  5SlackSend messagePosts a down alert when a site first stops answering, and an all clear with the outage length when it recovers.
  If alertEmailAddress is not empty
  6GmailSendEmails the same down or back up alert to the address you give, if you prefer email or want both.

How it works

What happens on each run, in plain English.

Every 15 minutes, the workflow reads the sites listed on the 'Sites' tab of your spreadsheet, requests each one and decides whether it is up. A successful answer counts as up; a server error, a timeout or a name that no longer resolves counts as down. When a site changes state you are told in Slack, by email, or both.

Alerts go out on the change, not the state. When a site first stops answering you get one message saying what went wrong; while it stays down you hear nothing more; when it answers again you get a single all-clear saying how long it had been down. Every change is written to a 'Status log' tab in the same spreadsheet, created on the first run, which is both its memory and your record of what happened and when. One unreachable site never stops the others being checked.

Before the first run you need a spreadsheet with a 'Sites' tab that has a column headed 'URL', one site per row, and a Slack channel or email address to alert.

uptimemonitoringhttpgoogle sheetsslackgmailalerts