Push alerts for DigitalOcean, on your iPhone
DigitalOcean alerting is email and Slack: Monitoring, App Platform and Uptime alerts go to one or both, and spend alerts arrive by email only. Duskwatch is an independent iPhone app for DigitalOcean, in development; it sends a push when a droplet goes off, a deploy fails, a database fails over or spend runs ahead of budget, from an alert server that can only read.
Updated
What can wake you
A push alert is for the moments when waiting for an inbox costs you: a resource is down, a release broke, or the bill is heading somewhere you did not plan. There are seven kinds, each with its own switch, and most also tell you when things recover.
| Alert | When it fires | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Droplet off or gone | A droplet stops running or disappears from the team | "web-01 is off" · acme-prod · Off since 02:14. |
| Deploy failed | An App Platform deployment ends in an error | "api-prod: deploy failed" · acme-prod · The previous version is still live. |
| App unhealthy | A component crashes or fails its health checks between deploys | "api-prod is unhealthy" · acme-prod · Since 02:14. |
| Database powered off, failed over or read-only | A managed database stops, switches to its standby or stops accepting writes | A database cluster in acme-prod fails over at 03:40 |
| Uptime check down | A DigitalOcean uptime check reports your endpoint down | "client-blog is down" · acme-prod · Down in 3 regions since 02:14. |
| Spend over budget, or on pace to pass it | Month-to-date spend passes your budget, or the month-end estimate says it will | "On pace to pass your budget" · acme-prod · Projected above $200 this month. |
| DigitalOcean incident in your regions | An incident on DigitalOcean's status page touches a region you use, or its API or control panel | "DigitalOcean incident in your regions" · acme-prod · In 1 region since 03:05. |
| Recovery | Something that alerted is back to normal, for most kinds | "web-01 is back on" · acme-prod · Was off for 7 min. |
Kubernetes clusters, load balancers, volumes, Spaces and certificates appear as findings in the app, without a push. There are no alerts on log contents.
What DigitalOcean sends on its own
DigitalOcean already alerts on plenty, and its metric thresholds are worth setting up. Its channels are email and Slack, plus SMS and feeds for its status page, so on a phone you depend on a mail or chat app deciding to make noise.
Monitoring resource alert policies notify by email, Slack, or both.
DigitalOcean docs: manage alert policies (external link), verified
App Platform alerts, including "Failed deployment", are sent by email or Slack.
DigitalOcean docs: App Platform alerts (external link), verified
Uptime checks run from up to four regions (Asia East, Europe, USA East, USA West), and notifications go by email and Slack.
DigitalOcean docs: Uptime features (external link), verified
Spend alerts are email notifications, triggered by actual usage and sent within an hour of spend crossing a threshold.
| What happened | DigitalOcean's channel | Push from Duskwatch |
|---|---|---|
| Metric crosses a threshold (Monitoring) | Email, Slack | No: keep your DigitalOcean policies for this |
| App Platform deploy fails | Email, Slack | Yes, with the version still live |
| Uptime check goes down | Email, Slack | Yes, and again when it is back |
| Spend crosses a threshold | Email, on actual usage | Yes, and earlier: when the estimate passes your budget |
| Incident on the status page | Email, SMS, Slack, RSS or Atom | Yes, for your regions and for API or control panel outages |
Quiet hours that still let outages through
- Per-rule switches: turn off the spend push and keep the droplet one, or the reverse.
- Quiet hours deliver pushes silently overnight, and nothing is dropped. "Let outages through" lets down and failed alerts still sound.
- Team mute silences one team, say a client in a launch week, without touching the others.
- A test alert sends a sample push, so you know the path works before a real night.
A server that can only read
Push alerts need something awake while your iPhone sleeps. That is a small server in the EU holding a separate permission that can only view your team. If a permission that can change things ever reaches it, the server rejects it and revokes it. The permission you use for actions stays on your iPhone. How sign-in works.
The push carries IDs only: a team ID and a resource ID.
Your iPhone adds the names: "web-01 is off" · acme-prod · Off since 02:14.
The server never learns that the droplet is called web-01.
- It keeps: the read-only permission, encrypted; the team ID; a one-way fingerprint of your account; your device's push address; your alert rules, including a spend budget if you set one; the last status of what you watch; and 30 days of alert history, as IDs.
- It never keeps: your password, the permission that can change things, database passwords or connection strings, logs, metric history, or the names of your teams and resources.
Open now, 30 days of history, and a clean exit
The Alerts tab starts with what is open now, then lists the last 30 days, so you can see that web-01 went off at 02:14 and came back at 02:21 without scrolling through email. Each entry opens the resource as it is now.
Turning alerts off deletes what the server holds about you within 24 hours, and "Delete my alert data" in Settings removes the rest. Without alerts, the app talks only to DigitalOcean, apart from looking up your IP when you add it to a database. The full data map is on the security page.
What Duskwatch doesn't do here
- No push for Kubernetes, load balancers, volumes, Spaces or certificates: they show as findings in the app.
- No alerts on log lines or log patterns.
- No replacement for your DigitalOcean metric alert policies; it does not alert on CPU or memory thresholds.
- No SMS, phone calls or escalation chains to other people.
- No alerts from a permission that can change things: the alert server can only read.
Questions
Does DigitalOcean send push notifications to my iPhone?
DigitalOcean sends its resource, App Platform and uptime alerts by email or Slack, and spend alerts by email only. A push on your iPhone comes from an app such as Duskwatch.
What can wake me up?
A droplet off or gone, a failed deploy, an unhealthy app, a database that is powered off, failed over or read-only, an uptime check that is down, spend over or on pace to pass your budget, and a DigitalOcean incident in your regions. Each has its own switch.
What can the alert server see?
It holds a separate permission that can only view your team, and it rejects any permission that can change things. Pushes carry IDs only; your iPhone adds the names, so the server never stores them.
Do I hear when it recovers?
For most alerts, yes. A recovery push follows when what alerted is back to normal, for example when web-01 is on again or the uptime check passes.
Can I silence nights but still hear about outages?
Yes. Quiet hours deliver pushes silently, and "Let outages through" lets down and failed alerts still sound. You can also mute a single team.
What happens when I turn alerts off?
The server deletes what it holds about you within 24 hours, and "Delete my alert data" in Settings removes the rest. The app keeps working and talks only to DigitalOcean.