A missing notification does not necessarily mean the monitor missed the problem. Monitoring, incident confirmation, alert creation, and message delivery are separate stages. Start with the monitor event, then follow the notification through Alert History.
1. Confirm that the event qualified for an alert
Uptime Basics sends notifications for eligible state changes, not for every individual check.
- An availability Down alert is eligible only after the outage meets the consecutive-check and regional confirmation requirements.
- A recovery alert is eligible after a monitor that was Down returns to Up.
- A new monitor moving from Unknown to Up does not send a recovery alert.
- An unchanged outage does not send the same Down notification after every failed check.
- Slow-response, SSL, and domain-expiry notifications follow their own enabled settings and state-change rules.
Open the monitor and compare Incident History, Detailed Logs, and the relevant feature panel. If no confirmed state change occurred, there is no delivery failure to investigate.
2. Find the event in Alert History
The delivery state identifies the next step:
| Alert History result | What to check next |
|---|---|
| No alert record | Confirmation rules, monitor state, monitor channel settings, verified destinations, and notification protection. |
| Queued, Sending, or Delayed | Delivery is still being processed. Wait before sending repeated tests. |
| Sent or Delivered | The provider accepted the message. Check the mailbox, carrier, device, forwarding rules, spam filtering, and quarantine. |
| Failed, Bounced, or Rejected | Review the displayed delivery error and verify that the destination still exists and can receive messages. |
| Suppressed | Check cooldowns, notification-volume protection, SMS allowance, destination support, and account protection. |
| SMS unavailable | SMS delivery was not available for that event; email and monitoring can continue independently. |
Alert History is retained for 14 days. For an older event, use the incident and check history to confirm what monitoring detected, even though the original delivery record is no longer available.
3. Check the account destinations and allowance
Open Account > Alerts and confirm:
- The destination is listed as Verified.
- The intended destination is available for selection on the monitor.
- SMS usage remains available if you expected a text message.
The account-wide channel toggle sets the starting choice for new monitors. The monitor's saved channel setting controls delivery for that monitor.
4. Check the monitor's Alert Channels
Open the monitor and expand Alert Channels under Monitor Tools. Confirm:
- The required channel is enabled for this monitor.
- The correct verified email address or phone number is selected.
- The setting reports that it saved successfully.
- The monitor is active rather than paused.
Changing an account's primary destination does not replace a different destination already saved explicitly on an existing monitor.
5. Send one test alert
Send a test through the same channel and destination. Test alerts enter the normal delivery queue, but they do not change monitor status or create incidents.
Wait for the test's Alert History state before trying again. Several rapid tests can make the history harder to interpret and may encounter delivery safeguards.
6. Check the receiving service
For email, search spam, junk, quarantine, focused inbox, forwarding rules, and security-gateway logs. Confirm the mailbox is active and not full.
For SMS, confirm the number and country code, cellular service, blocked senders, spam filtering, and carrier support. SMS alerts currently support verified Canadian and US phone numbers and use the plan's monthly segment allowance.
A provider-reported Sent or Delivered state does not guarantee that a mailbox placed the email in the inbox or that a handset displayed the text.
7. Account for notification safeguards
Uptime Basics can limit repeated state-change alerts from noisy monitors. Availability alerts have a repeated-Down cooldown and hourly volume protection, while account protection can suppress alerts during abnormal activity.
These safeguards do not delete checks, change a valid incident, or make a monitor look healthy. Review the monitor's history rather than using the presence of a notification as the only outage record.
When to contact Support
Contact Support when a recent test repeatedly remains Queued, fails without a clear corrective action, or reports Delivered across multiple destinations that cannot find the message.
Include the monitor name, approximate event time, channel, masked destination, and visible delivery state. Do not include passwords, verification codes, full phone numbers, authorization headers, or private keys.