How to get an alert if website errors

• Why use error alerts?

• Enabling error alerts

• Getting an alert on every error

• Finding failing monitors

• Example of a website error message

When monitoring a webpage, there are cases when you want to get an alert if the website results in an error or if the site blocks our crawler due to bot detection. This can be useful if you monitor your website for regression, ensure the website is active, ignore bot-detection changes, and more.

Bot detected means the check found signs of a bot wall, such as Akamai’s “I’m not a robot” page, Vercel Security Checkpoint, or Shopify’s permissions page. A page titled “Access Denied” alone does not mean bot detection. Connection Error covers browser-level failures such as certificate errors, too many redirects, and proxy connection failures. Website Error means the site answered with an HTTP 4xx or 5xx error. Specific labels such as DNS Error, SSL Error, and Website Timeout are unchanged.

You can enable the "Alert me on errors" option by selecting it in the Advanced panel (the sliders button near the bottom right) when editing a monitor. When creating a new monitor, click More settings first to show the Advanced button. For monitors that have never had error alerting configured, error alerts are applied by default.

To compare error pages, such as 404 or 500 pages, and bot-check pages instead of failing the check, turn on Monitor error page under Advanced Settings → Errors. Changes to those pages can then trigger change alerts. This setting is off by default and is available on every plan except for PDF monitors. Timeouts and empty responses still fail as before.

To stop error alert emails for your user account across all monitors, turn off Error alerts under Account → Profile → Email preferences. The email-footer preferences page calls this setting Monitors that keep failing. You can also use your mail app's Unsubscribe button on an error alert email. This does not change any monitor's error alert setting. SMS and integration error alerts continue to arrive, and CC addresses cannot opt out.

The default error alert fires after a set time of continuous failure based on the monitor's check interval, rather than after the same number of failed checks for every monitor. Monitors with longer check intervals can therefore alert after fewer failed checks than before. Below is the criteria for how many errors need to be detected for each reporting rate:

For a threshold of N consecutive errors, alerts arrive after N, 2N, 4N, 8N, 16N, and 32N failed checks, then every 32N failed checks while the monitor keeps failing. Repeat error alerts become less frequent while the monitor stays broken, so a long-broken monitor sends a handful of alerts instead of dozens.

You can also select "On every error" to receive an alert for every failed check.

If you manage many monitors, you can quickly see which ones are currently failing by using the Failing only filter on your dashboard.

Step 1:

On the dashboard, click the filter icon to the right of the search bar.

Step 2:

In the Monitors section of the filter panel, switch on the Failing only toggle. Your monitor list updates to show only monitors that are currently failing, and a Failing Monitor tag appears above the list.

You can combine this toggle with other filters, such as labels, check frequency, or status, to narrow the list further. To remove the filter, click the X on the Failing Monitor tag or click Clear Filter.

Step 3:

Note: Exporting monitors is available on Business plans only.

With Failing only turned on, click the Export (download) icon in the toolbar above your monitor list. On smaller screens, the icon is inside the ⋮ (more options) menu at the end of that toolbar. The export panel opens on the side. The export includes the monitors that match your current filters, or only the monitors you've selected.

Step 4:

In the export panel, tick Latest error message and Latest summary, then download the file as CSV or Excel. Both options are off by default.

Your file gets three extra columns:

• lastErrorDate: the date of the monitor's latest failed check.

• lastError: why that check failed. It starts with the HTTP status when there is one, for example "HTTP 404 · Website Error: [Crawler] HTTP 404 returned".

• lastSummary: the AI summary of the monitor's latest change.

A cell is left empty when a monitor has never failed or has no change summary. Internal errors show only Internal Error, without details. Contact support if you see one.

From the filtered list, you can open any monitor to review its errors and update its settings. To act on several monitors at once, select them using the checkboxes and use the bulk actions toolbar to run, pause, deactivate, label, or edit them together.

Note: Bulk editing is available on all plans, including Free. Some bulk actions, such as labeling and moving monitors, require a Business plan. See How do I bulk edit jobs? for details.

To learn more about the other filter and sort options on the dashboard, see How can I filter through and sort jobs?

Website error alert emails have the subject “Your monitor (title) is failing.” The body opens with “We found a problem” and explains that the page created an error on its latest check, or says how many checks in a row failed. A “Please take action” sentence links to the page, its Timeline, its settings, and an option to pause it. The email has one Pause monitor button instead of three large buttons, and the monitor name appears in the subject rather than the body. When and how often error alerts are sent has not changed. Slack, Teams, and webhook error alerts still use their previous wording.

If you would like to use the error page as a new baseline to use to compare to the next snapshot that comes in, please let the team know at support@visualping.io and we be glad to assist.

Please contact us if you have questions or need support at support@visualping.io or start a chat by clicking the bottom right chat button.

• How can I filter through and sort jobs?

• How do I bulk edit jobs?

• Using labels

• Notifications Overview

• How do I use Webhooks?