Getting started

Welcome to Aloft, your self-hosted uptime monitor. This guide gets you from zero to your first live monitor in a few minutes.

Create an account

1. Open Aloft and click Create an account (or go straight to the sign-up page).
2. Enter your email, a password (at least 8 characters), and optionally your name.
3. Submit the form. You’re signed in immediately and dropped on your dashboard — no email confirmation step to clear first.

Note

Each email can only be used once. If sign-up says the email can’t be used, you probably already have an account — try signing in or resetting your password instead.

Sign in

Already have an account?

1. Go to the sign-in page (Welcome back).
2. Enter your email and password.
3. If you’ve turned on two-factor authentication, you’ll be asked for a 6-digit code from your authenticator app next. See Account & security for details.

If your team has configured social sign-in, you’ll also see Sign in with Google and/or Sign in with GitHub buttons above the email form. Use whichever your organisation set up.

Tip

Forgot your password? Use the Forgot password link on the sign-in page. We’ll email you a reset link that’s valid for 30 minutes.

What you see first

After signing in you land on your dashboard — the Monitors view. It lists every endpoint you’re watching, with status, response time, and a quick search box. When you’re brand new it’s empty, with a New monitor button waiting for you.

The top navigation gives you everything else:

• Monitors — your checks and their live status (this is your home base).
• Incidents — a cross-monitor timeline of outages.
• Alerts — where you connect notification channels (email, Slack, Discord, webhooks).
• Maintenance — planned-work windows that suppress alerts.
• Status pages — public uptime pages you can share.
• API — bearer-token API keys for the REST API.

Your account settings (profile, security, sessions, API keys, organisations) live under Settings.

Theme

Aloft supports light, dark, and system themes. Use the theme toggle to pick whichever you prefer; system follows your operating system’s setting.

Organisations

Everything in Aloft — monitors, alerts, status pages — belongs to an organisation. The first time you sign in, Aloft automatically creates a personal organisation for you and sets it as your current one, so you can start working right away without any setup.

Organisations are also how you collaborate. You can invite teammates and assign roles to share monitors and alerts. See Teams & roles to learn more.

Create your first monitor (about 3 minutes)

1. From the Monitors view, click New monitor.
2. Pick a monitor type. The simplest is an HTTP/HTTPS check — paste the URL you want to watch.
3. Give it a name so it’s easy to spot in the list.
4. Leave the defaults for the check interval and timeout to start (you can tune these any time).
5. Save. The monitor appears on your dashboard, and the worker begins checking it on its schedule. Status updates show up within seconds of each check.

That’s it — you’re monitoring. For the full tour of monitor types (Keyword, TCP port, Ping, SSL expiry, Domain expiry, Heartbeat), scheduling, confirmation re-checks, response-time thresholds, and tags, head to the Monitors overview.

Tip

Want to be told when something goes down? Connect a notification channel under Alerts, then attach it to your monitor. Email, Slack, Discord, and signed webhooks are all supported.

Next steps

• Monitors overview — every monitor type and option explained.
• Account & security — passwords, two-factor authentication, and active sessions.
• Teams & roles — invite teammates and manage organisations.