Documentation
Everything you need to get the most out of Beacon — from your first monitor to advanced alerting.
Getting Started
Beacon gets you up and running in under a minute. No complex configuration, no CLI tools — just a browser.
Sign up
Click 'Get started free' and sign in with your GitHub or Google account. No password to remember.
Add your first monitor
Click '+ Add monitor', paste your URL, choose a check interval (from 1 to 60 minutes), and hit save.
Set up alerts
Go to Settings → Alert Channels and add your email. You'll get notified the moment something goes down.
Create a status page
Go to Status Pages → New, pick a slug, and select which monitors to show. Share the public URL with your users.
Monitors
Monitors are the core of Beacon. Each monitor watches a single URL or API endpoint and checks it at your chosen interval.
Status Pages
Status pages are public-facing dashboards that show the health of your services. They're the window between your monitoring and your users.
Monitors vs Status Pages
- Private — only you see them
- The engine that runs checks
- Records raw uptime data
- Triggers incidents and alerts
- Public — shared with your users
- The face your customers see
- Shows selected monitors only
- Custom domain support (Pro)
Each status page has a unique slug (e.g. /status/my-company). You choose which monitors appear and their display order. Your users see real-time status, uptime timelines, and any active incidents.
Incidents
Incidents are automatically created and resolved — you don't need to manage them manually.
Monitor goes DOWN
When a check fails for the first time after being UP, an incident is created automatically with the failure cause.
Ongoing outage
Subsequent failed checks keep the incident open. The duration timer keeps running.
Monitor recovers
When the monitor returns a healthy response, the incident is resolved with the total downtime duration.
Each incident records: start time, resolution time, duration (in seconds), and the cause (HTTP error or timeout reason).
Alerts
Alerts notify you when a monitor goes down or recovers. You configure alert channels in Settings — each channel is a destination for notifications.
Alert channels are verified on creation. Free plan: 1 channel. Pro plan: up to 10 channels.
Plans & Limits
| Feature | Free | Pro — $5/mo |
|---|---|---|
| Monitors | 3 | Unlimited |
| Alert channels | 1 | 10 |
| Check frequency | Every minute | Every minute |
| Email alerts | ✓ | ✓ |
| SMS alerts | — | ✓ |
| Data retention | 7 days | 1 year |
| Status pages | ✓ | ✓ |
| Custom domains | — | ✓ |
| Priority support | — | ✓ |