Better Stack

Freesbe takes uptime incidents from Better Stack. Once an admin connects it:

• Each incident posts into the channel you pick as one card, with the monitor’s name, what it checks, why it failed (like Status 503 or a timeout) and the regions that saw it.
• The same card stays current. Acknowledging shows who did it, and when the monitor is back up, the card turns green and says how long it was down, with a reply under it for everyone following the thread.
• Acknowledge and Resolve on the card change the incident in Better Stack, when you give Freesbe an API token.
• A live problems board pinned in the channel lists every monitor that’s down right now, and reports post on their own every morning or every Monday.

Incidents post as their own member, Better Stack, so their cards are easy to tell apart from people.

Connect Better Stack

Only owners and admins can connect it. You need someone who’s an admin of your Better Stack team.

1. Open Workspace settings → Integrations & apps → Integrations → Monitoring and click Connect under Better Stack.
2. Give the connection a name, like Better Stack: production, and pick the channel it posts to.
3. For links to each incident and the Acknowledge and Resolve buttons, fill in Better Stack team address and API token (see Acknowledge and resolve from the card). You can add them later.
4. Click Connect Better Stack. Freesbe shows the Freesbe URL for Better Stack. Copy it now: it’s only shown once.

Then, in Better Stack:

1. Open Uptime → Integrations, and add a Webhook.
2. Name it Freesbe and paste the Freesbe URL in Webhook URL. Keep incident started, acknowledged and resolved on, and save it.
3. If your monitors alert through an escalation policy, add the webhook to it. The next incident posts a card.

Severities

Better Stack’s incidents have no severity of their own, so each card is High (🔴), or Critical (🚨) when the monitor sends critical alerts to phones. Incidents to post leaves out what’s below the severity you pick.

Acknowledge and resolve from the card

With a token, everyone in the channel can press Acknowledge and Resolve on an incident’s card. Better Stack records the person’s name, stops escalating, and the card shows who did it.

To set it up:

1. In Better Stack, open Settings → API tokens and copy an Uptime token for the team the monitors are in (or make one for Freesbe).
2. In the connection’s settings in Freesbe, fill in Better Stack team address with any page of your team, like https://uptime.betterstack.com/team/123456/monitors, and paste the token in API token.

Freesbe checks the token before saving it, and keeps it encrypted.

The board and reports

Like Zabbix, each connection pins a live problems board in its channel, listing the monitors down right now, worst first, with how long and who acknowledged them. Reports count the incidents Freesbe got over the last day or week: by severity, still open, total downtime, the typical time to recover and the monitors down most. See The live problems board and Reports for more.

Questions

Does it post heartbeats too? Yes. A missed heartbeat is an incident in Better Stack, so it posts like a monitor that’s down.

Can different monitors go to different channels? Yes. Connect Better Stack once per channel, add a webhook for each, and put each in the escalation policy of the monitors it’s for.

Is the URL a secret? Yes: anyone with it can post incidents into the channel. If it leaks, delete the connection and connect again for a new URL.