When email alerts are enough, and when to add SMS

The short answer

Start with email. Every paid DashCanopy plan includes email notifications, so a failed check has a path to an inbox without extra products. Add SMS only on Pro or Agency, and only if you connect your own Twilio account. SMS is worth it when a down site costs you money or trust in the time between “the email arrived” and “you noticed the email.” If you already read mail quickly, another channel is another thing to maintain.

The tile remains the record either way. An alert is a tap on the shoulder. It does not fix the site, and it does not replace the morning read described in the morning check.

What email is for

Email is the default because it is already how most operators receive receipts, host notices, and deploy mail. Starter, at $19 per month, includes it along with up to 5 sites and 10-minute checks. Pro and Agency include it too. You do not upgrade only to “get alerts.” You upgrade when you need a shorter check interval, more sites, webhooks, SMS, or the Agency-only pieces.

Use email when you are at a desk for the hours the sites matter, when a ten- or five-minute delay is acceptable, and when the inbox you use is one you actually open. Point the notification at that inbox. An alert to an address you created for a newsletter in 2019 is not an alert. It is a log file.

Read the message against the tile before you act. A check can fail and recover inside the next interval. If you open the email twenty minutes later and the tile is online, you had a blip. Note it if the site is a store. Do not restart services because a recovered email is still unread at the top of the inbox.

You might be thinking email is too slow to be the only channel. Sometimes it is. The honest test is your last five outages, not a generic claim about inboxes. If you learned about them from a reader, email to an unwatched address was not enough. If you learned about them from mail within the hour and that hour was acceptable, SMS would have added cost and a second vendor without changing the outcome.

What SMS adds, and what it requires

Pro ($69 per month, up to 15 sites, checks every 5 minutes) and Agency ($149 per month, unlimited sites, checks every minute) list SMS alerts as bring-your-own Twilio. Starter does not. There is no SMS toggle that bypasses the plan or that sends from a DashCanopy-owned number you do not have to set up.

Twilio is a separate account, with its own phone number and its own bill. DashCanopy’s pricing page says to review Twilio’s current terms and pricing before you enable SMS. The setup notes in the product walk through a Twilio account, an Account SID, an auth token, a from-number, and the phone that should receive the text. Those values belong in your DashCanopy secrets or Twilio settings for the account, not in a screenshot in a chat. Twilio’s own docs are the place to confirm how trial accounts and phone numbers work today (Twilio docs).

A text is useful when the person who can restore the site is away from the inbox: a commute, a client meeting, a night when the only other signal would be a customer. It is also useful on Agency’s one-minute checks if you intend to react at that pace. A one-minute check plus an email you read at lunch is a one-minute log and a lunchtime response. Match the channel to the response you will really give.

SMS will not know which host command to run. The text should send you back to the tile and then to the host. If several people need the text, remember Agency includes up to 5 seats and Pro includes one. A single alert number is not a team schedule. Decide whose phone it is, and what that person does at night. An unowned phone is worse than email, because everyone assumes someone else saw it.

A concrete way to choose

Answer three questions on paper.

How many sites, and how fast must a failed check show up on the tile? Five sites and 10 minutes: Starter, email only. Up to 15 sites, or 5-minute checks, or you already know you want SMS: Pro. More than 15 sites, a minute-level check, or several people: Agency. The full split is in choosing a plan.

Who is allowed to get the alert, and will they act? If the answer is “whoever sees email first,” stay on email. If the answer is “Alex, and Alex will open the host,” put SMS on Alex’s number and tell everyone else that Alex has it.

What did the last real incident cost in the delay before you knew? If the delay was the check interval itself, SMS does not fix it. Buy the faster plan interval. If the delay was the alert sitting unread, SMS addresses that, and a faster interval alone does not.

Set it up without paging yourself all afternoon

Connect Twilio on a quiet day, not during an outage. Save the credentials, then use the product’s send path — the pricing notes mention an offline tile can offer a send-alert action once the secrets are in place — and confirm one text arrives. If it does not, fix the from-number, the destination, and the Twilio account status before you trust it overnight.

Keep email on even after SMS works. A text can fail because a carrier filtered it or a phone was off. Mail is the second copy. Two channels are a belt and suspenders, not a requirement to read both before you act. If either one says a named site failed, open that site.

Do not send tests in a loop. A test is one message. A loop is how you train yourself to swipe the alert away, which is the failure mode SMS was supposed to avoid.

Limits

DashCanopy does not include a Twilio balance. If the Twilio account cannot send, the text will not arrive, and the tile will still change. Check the tile when a text you expected is missing. The absence of a text is not proof the site is up.

This article is not a recommendation to buy a particular phone plan, and it is not advice about after-hours labor rules for a team. It is a description of which DashCanopy plan can send which kind of notice, and a way to decide if you will use it.

Alerts are configured per the product’s notification settings. After they work, go back to reading tiles in order. The alert is for the hours you are not doing that.

Questions about alerts

Can I use SMS on Starter?

No. The pricing table lists SMS on Pro and Agency only, using your Twilio account. Starter includes email notifications.

Does DashCanopy text me from its own number?

No. You provide the Twilio account, the sending number, and the destination number. Review Twilio’s pricing before you turn it on. DashCanopy does not quote a per-text rate of its own on the pricing page.

Should every degraded check send a text?

Degraded means the site answered slowly. That may not deserve a text, especially on a host that cold-starts. Prefer SMS for offline — the check failed — and use the tile for degraded unless you have already decided slow is as urgent as down for that property. The definitions are in online, degraded, and offline.