UPDATE - 29 Jan 2019 - this application has been tested and officially accepted by Slack. Downtime Monkey is now listed in the Slack App directory :)

New year, new feature... and this is a big one: downtime alerts to Slack.

As well as getting email and SMS alerts when your websites go down you can now receive alerts straight to your Slack workspace.

Just in case you've been living under a rock (no problem, rocks rock!)...

Slack is a hub developed to make communication between teams easier. It's really popular with web design and development teams.

There are a couple of features in Slack that make it a great fit for receiving downtime alerts:

1) When an alert is sent to Slack everyone on the team who has access to the Slack channel will receive it.

2) Slack is really fast - faster than email. Alerts are received almost instantly after being sent.

Down Alerts

Choose the Slack channel to receive messages if a website goes down.

Up Alerts

Receive 'up' messages when a website comes back online.

Instant Alerts

Alert messages can be sent the instant a website is detected as down (default).

Custom Alert Timing

Alert messages can be scheduled to only be sent if a website stays down for a specific time: 1 minute, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes and 1 hour are the options.

Repeat Alerts

Repeat messages can be sent if a website remains down for a specific time: every 10 mins, 20 mins, 30 mins, 1 hour, 2 hours, 3 hours, 6 hours, 12 hours and 24 hours are the options.

Rate Limit Alerts

You can set the maximum number of downtime messages that can be sent per hour. This is really useful for anyone managing lots of sites on the same server - if the server goes down it prevents you being bombarded with hundreds of messages. Note for every 'down' alert sent, you'll always receive an 'up' alert when the website comes back online.

Slack alerts are available to everyone who uses Downtime Monkey - both Free and Pro users.

Free plan users can monitor up to 60 websites with default settings.

Custom alert timing, repeat alerts and rate limiting are advanced features available only to Pro plan users.

This is really easy and takes about 2 minutes:

1) Login, go to Slack Settings and click on 'Add to Slack'.

2) Select the Slack Channel that you want to receive alert messages to, click 'Authorize'.

3 (Optional) Send a test alert to your Slack by clicking on 'Send Test Message' in Slack Settings - you should receive it in your Slack.

4) Update your monitors - you'll have the option to turn Slack alerts 'on' or 'off' for each monitor.

To provide the functionality that enables website downtime alerts to Slack we developed a Slack App and integrated into Downtime Monkey.

At present the App is in a short period of beta testing - once this is completed we'll submit for review and endorsement from Slack.

The App has now been tested and officially accepted by Slack.

If you're interested you can see details in the Slack App Directory: Downtime Monkey Slack App.