FAQ
Short answers to common questions. Each links to the guide with the full story.
How often does Aloft run checks?
Section titled “How often does Aloft run checks?”On each monitor’s own interval, which you set per monitor. The default for a new monitor is every 5 minutes (300 seconds); you can set anything from 60 seconds up to once a day. See Monitors overview.
Why didn’t I get an alert when something went down?
Section titled “Why didn’t I get an alert when something went down?”A few common reasons:
- Confirmation re-checks — a monitor only opens an incident (and alerts) after enough consecutive failed checks, so a single blip is suppressed.
- No channel attached — alerts only go to channels you’ve attached to that monitor.
- A disabled channel — disabled channels are skipped.
- A maintenance window — active windows suppress incidents and alerts.
See Alerting overview and Troubleshooting.
What does “Degraded” mean?
Section titled “What does “Degraded” mean?”The check succeeded, but the response was slower than the response-time threshold you set on that monitor. The endpoint is reachable, just sluggish. Degraded still counts as “up” for uptime math. See Monitors overview.
What’s the difference between “Down” and “Unknown”?
Section titled “What’s the difference between “Down” and “Unknown”?”Down means checks are failing. Unknown means Aloft hasn’t recorded a result yet — new monitors sit here until their first check lands. (The dashboard status filter labels Unknown as Pending.)
Can I monitor internal or private hosts?
Section titled “Can I monitor internal or private hosts?”Only if your administrator has enabled it. By default Aloft’s SSRF guard blocks
probes to private, loopback, and cloud-metadata addresses. An admin can relax
this by setting ALLOW_INSECURE_TARGETS=1 on the deployment, which is a
deliberate trade-off for a trusted, internal box.
What’s the difference between acknowledging an incident and a maintenance window?
Section titled “What’s the difference between acknowledging an incident and a maintenance window?”Acknowledging an open incident just marks that a human is aware of it — it doesn’t stop checks or change the monitor’s state. A maintenance window is planned ahead of time and actively suppresses incidents and alerts for the covered monitors while it’s active. Use acknowledge for “I’ve got this”; use maintenance for known, scheduled downtime. See Incidents and Maintenance windows.
Who can see a status page?
Section titled “Who can see a status page?”Anyone with the public link — status pages are public by design, so don’t put anything sensitive in monitor names or posts that you wouldn’t want shared.
Can I be a member of multiple organizations?
Section titled “Can I be a member of multiple organizations?”Yes. You get a personal organization automatically, and you can be invited into others. Everything (monitors, alerts, status pages) belongs to the organization you’re currently in. See Teams & roles.
How many two-factor backup codes do I get?
Section titled “How many two-factor backup codes do I get?”Ten single-use backup codes when you enrol in two-factor authentication. Each works once. See Account & security.
Is there an API?
Section titled “Is there an API?”Yes — a REST API under /api/v1 for managing monitors and reading a status
overview, authenticated with a Bearer token. See
API and integrations.
How do I get an API key?
Section titled “How do I get an API key?”On the API page in the top navigation. Creating and revoking keys is admin-only, and the raw token is shown just once. See API and integrations.
How do I test a notification channel?
Section titled “How do I test a notification channel?”From the Channels tab under Alerts, each channel has a test action that sends a sample notification so you can confirm it’s wired up before relying on it. See Channels.
What user agent do Aloft’s probes send?
Section titled “What user agent do Aloft’s probes send?”HTTP and keyword checks identify themselves as Aloft/1.0 (+monitor). Allow
this in any WAF or bot filter on the target so checks aren’t blocked.
My heartbeat monitor keeps going down — why?
Section titled “My heartbeat monitor keeps going down — why?”Usually the job isn’t posting in time. A heartbeat monitor goes down when no check-in arrives within the interval plus the grace period. Either the job failed to call its ingest URL, or the interval and grace are tighter than the job’s real cadence. See Heartbeat monitors.
Do I get notified when a monitor recovers?
Section titled “Do I get notified when a monitor recovers?”Yes. Aloft alerts on both edges — when an incident opens and when it resolves — and the recovery alert includes the total downtime. See Alerting overview.
How do I stop alerts during planned maintenance?
Section titled “How do I stop alerts during planned maintenance?”Create a maintenance window covering the affected monitors. Within an active window, Aloft suppresses incidents and alerts automatically. For a quick, manual stop you can also pause a monitor. See Maintenance windows.
Are my webhook payloads signed?
Section titled “Are my webhook payloads signed?”Yes. Webhook deliveries are HMAC-signed so your receiver can verify they came from Aloft. See Webhooks and signing.
Why is everything showing as Unknown / not updating?
Section titled “Why is everything showing as Unknown / not updating?”The background worker that runs checks probably isn’t running. The dashboard shows a “Worker is not reporting” card when it stops checking in. See Troubleshooting.