How to Get Notified When My App Crashes
Set up UptimeRobot (free) for downtime alerts and Sentry (free) for crash alerts. UptimeRobot pings your URL every 5 minutes and emails you when it is unreachable. Sentry catches JavaScript errors and application crashes in real time. Together, they cover both "app is down" and "app is broken" scenarios.
Why this matters
The worst way to learn your app crashed is from a user email, a tweet, or silence — users leaving without telling you. Crash notifications let you respond in minutes instead of hours (or days). For a solo builder, this is the difference between a minor hiccup and a reputation-damaging outage.
What's at stake
Without crash alerts, you could have an app that has been down for hours without knowing. Every minute of undetected downtime is a user who tried your app, got an error, and formed a permanent negative impression.
Step by step.
Set up UptimeRobot for downtime alerts
Create a free UptimeRobot account at uptimerobot.com. Add a new monitor: choose HTTP(s) type, enter your app URL, set the check interval to 5 minutes, and add your email as an alert contact. You get 50 monitors on the free plan.
Add Slack or Discord notifications
In UptimeRobot, go to Alert Contacts and add a Slack webhook or Discord webhook. This sends crash notifications directly to your team channel. Faster than email and easier to coordinate responses if you have collaborators.
Set up Sentry for application crash alerts
Install Sentry in your app to catch JavaScript errors and unhandled exceptions. Configure an alert rule to notify you on the first occurrence of any new error. This catches crashes that UptimeRobot cannot detect — like a page that loads but has broken functionality.
Create a public status page
Both UptimeRobot and Better Stack offer free public status pages. Create one and link to it from your app footer or help docs. When your app goes down, users can check the status page instead of emailing you.
Set up escalation for critical alerts
For high-priority apps, configure SMS or phone call alerts for downtime lasting more than 10 minutes. UptimeRobot Pro and Better Stack offer SMS/phone alerting. For free alternatives, use a Slack notification with push alerts on your phone.
Get alerted the moment something goes wrong
- Instant crash notifications via email, Slack, or Discord
- Uptime monitoring with public status page
- Error severity classification so you know what to fix first
Frequently asked questions.
Downtime means your app URL is completely unreachable — the server is not responding. A crash means the app loads but something is broken — a JavaScript error, a failed API call, or a blank screen. UptimeRobot catches downtime. Sentry catches crashes. You need both.
UptimeRobot checks every 5 minutes on the free plan (1 minute on paid). Sentry alerts are near-instant — within seconds of an error occurring. For most solo builders, a 5-minute detection delay is acceptable. If you need faster, upgrade UptimeRobot or use Better Stack.
Alert fatigue is real. Configure Sentry to notify only on new issues, not every error occurrence. Set UptimeRobot to alert after 2 failed checks (10 minutes) to avoid false alarms from brief network blips. Only add SMS/phone alerts for critical downtime.
First, check if the app is down or just has errors. If down: check your hosting provider status page. If errors: read the Sentry stack trace to identify the cause. Fix, deploy, and monitor for recurrence. Document the incident so you can prevent similar issues.