Notifications & Alerts

Stay informed and responsive with flexible incident notifications.

Upstat ensures your team is notified when incidents happen, evolve, or need attention. Notifications can be triggered at key points in the incident lifecycle and delivered through multiple channels.

Notification Triggers

Notifications can be sent when:

An incident is declared
An incident is acknowledged
The status or severity changes
A user is @mentioned in a comment
An incident is resolved or marked closed

These triggers help responders and stakeholders stay in sync as the incident progresses.

Who Gets Notified?

By default, notifications are sent to:

Incident participants (those who acknowledge, comment, or are mentioned)
Users who are directly @mentioned
On-call responders

Upstat minimizes noise by suppressing duplicate alerts and bundling updates where appropriate.

Participants vs Escalations

Upstat distinguishes between two classes of notifications:

1. Participant Notifications

These keep you updated about a specific incident you’re actively involved in.
They include:

Mentions
Comments
Status/severity changes
Being added as a participant

These are contextual and designed to reduce confusion and keep contributors aligned.

2. Escalation Path Notifications

These are triggered by events in the system—like a failing monitor—and are meant to alert the right people to declare or take action on an incident.

Examples:

Monitor detects an outage and fires an alert
An automation rule sends a high-priority SMS to on-call
An incident is auto-created with a default responder escalation path

There is some overlap between these paths. A user might be alerted via escalation and then continue receiving participant notifications once they engage with the incident.

To avoid alert fatigue, it’s important to configure escalation alerts thoughtfully, especially if using multiple delivery channels or assigning multiple users.

Delivery Channels

Notifications can be delivered via:

In-app notifications
Email
SMS

Users can see all notifications in the notification center.

Configuring Notification Behavior

Participant notifications are sent automatically based on engagement
Alerting notifications can be configured per monitor or automation rule

Acknowledgments and Muting

When an incident is acknowledged:

Upstat suppresses follow-up alerts to prevent noise
Participant notifications continue for active users
Muting options will let responders temporarily opt out

Summary

Participant notifications keep you updated on the incidents you’re involved in
Escalation alerts notify you of new or urgent events in the system
Both types work together to balance awareness with focus

Learn more