Dead man's switch for your infrastructure

Your backup failed
three weeks ago.

You found out today. CanaryAlert makes sure that never happens again. AI reads your notification emails and alerts you when things break — or when they stop arriving entirely.

3 sources free forever. No credit card.

Email arrives
AI classifies
Alert fires
See it in action

AI reads your emails so you don't have to

Write rules in plain English. No regex, no code. The AI figures it out.

Veeam / Backup SoftwareSUCCESS
From: veeam@infra.local
Subject: Backup Job: Full Backup — Success
Status: Success
12 VMs processed, 0 errors
Total: 842 GB in 3h 22m
Rule

"Email contains 'Success' and all VMs show 'Completed'"

SQL Server AgentFAILURE
From: sqlserver@db01.local
Subject: SQL Agent Job: Invoice_ETL — Failed
Status: Failed
Step 3 (Load Invoices): Deadlock victim
0 of 4,218 rows processed
Rule

"Email contains 'Failed' or mentions deadlock/timeout"

Cron Jobs & ScriptsWARNING
From: root@web01.local
Subject: Cron: /usr/local/bin/rotate-logs.sh
Log rotation completed
3 of 5 servers processed
2 skipped: disk space low on /var/log
Rule

"Output mentions 'skipped' or 'partial'"

Monitoring DigestsFAILURE
From: prtg@monitoring.local
Subject: PRTG Daily Digest — 3 sensors down
47 sensors OK, 3 sensors DOWN
Disk Free on SRV04: 2% (CRITICAL)
Ping SRV07: Timeout
Rule

"Any sensor shows DOWN or CRITICAL"

Why CanaryAlert

Built for the emails you already get

Catches silent failures

Your backup service crashed. No email was sent. Nobody noticed for weeks. CanaryAlert's dead man's switch catches what other tools literally cannot.

No regex, just English

"Email contains 'Success' and all VMs show 'Completed.'" That's a real rule. The AI handles format variations, edge cases, and ambiguity.

2 minutes to set up

Create a source. Write your rules. Forward your emails. You could be monitoring your first backup job before you finish your coffee.

HTTP pings for scripts

Not everything sends email. Add a curl to the end of your cron job or script. If the ping stops, the dead man's switch fires. Send output for AI classification too.

Silence the noise

Maintenance windows suppress alerts during planned downtime. Patch your servers without waking up the on-call team.

Uptime at a glance

Reports show success rates, failure trends, and missing events across all your sources. Know your infrastructure health without digging through logs.

Daily & weekly digests

Get a morning briefing email with the status of every source. No news is good news — but now you'll know for sure.

The difference

Your inbox vs. your dashboard

Without CanaryAlert
47 unread notification emails
"Was that backup email from today or yesterday?"
Grep through emails for 'error' and hope for the best
Backup failed silently 3 weeks ago
Find out when you need the restore
With CanaryAlert
One dashboard, every source at a glance
AI classifies each email in seconds
Failures trigger instant alerts via email, Slack, or webhook
Missing emails trigger dead man's switch
Maintenance windows silence alerts during planned downtime
Daily digests and uptime reports keep you informed
MK
Mike K.IT Admin · MSP

We had a Veeam job fail silently for 3 weeks. Nobody checked the emails. Found out when a client needed a restore. CanaryAlert would have caught it in hours. This is exactly the tool I've been looking for.

#it-monitoring12:34 PM
Pricing

Monitoring that pays for itself

One missed backup restoration costs more than a year of CanaryAlert.

Free

Kick the tires

$0

3 sources

  • AI classification
  • Email alerts
  • Dead man's switch
  • Slack & webhooks
  • Maintenance windows
  • Source groups
  • Reports & digests
Get Started

Starter

Solo sysadmin

$12/mo

15 sources

  • Everything in Free
  • 15 sources
  • Email support
  • 90-day history
Start Free Trial
Most Popular

Pro

Small teams & power users

$29/mo

50 sources

  • Everything in Starter
  • 50 sources
  • Priority support
  • Custom rules
Start Free Trial

Team

IT departments & MSPs

$69/mo

150 sources

  • Everything in Pro
  • 150 sources
  • Dedicated support
  • SLA guarantee
Start Free Trial
FAQ

You've got questions

How does AI classification work?

You write plain-English rules like "email contains Success and all VMs completed." Claude (by Anthropic) reads each incoming email against your rules and classifies it as SUCCESS, FAILURE, or WARNING. No regex. No code.

What's the dead man's switch?

You tell us "expect an email every 24 hours." If it doesn't arrive, we mark it MISSING and alert you. This catches the failures that other tools literally cannot detect — when the email just stops coming.

How do I forward emails to CanaryAlert?

Each source gets a unique address like abc123@mail.canaryalert.io. Set up a forwarding rule in Outlook/Gmail, or add it as a CC in your backup software. Takes about 2 minutes.

What if my system doesn't send email?

Use the HTTP ping endpoint instead. Each source gets a unique URL you can curl from cron jobs, scripts, or Docker containers. A simple GET records success; POST with a message body gets AI classification. Both reset the dead man's switch.

Is my data secure?

Emails are processed in AWS us-east-1, encrypted at rest, auto-deleted after 90 days. We never share your data. Classification happens via API — your emails aren't used to train any AI models.

What alert channels are supported?

Email alerts are on by default. You can also send alerts to Slack via incoming webhooks, or POST to any HTTPS endpoint (PagerDuty, OpsGenie, Teams, custom systems). All alert channels are available on every plan, including Free.

What are maintenance windows?

Maintenance windows suppress alerts during planned downtime. Set a time range and pick the sources — CanaryAlert still records events, but won't fire alerts until the window ends. Great for patching, reboots, or scheduled outages.

What are digest notifications?

A daily or weekly summary email with the status of every source. Think of it as a morning briefing — one email that tells you everything is green, or highlights what needs attention. Configure it in Settings.

Can I actually try it for free?

Yes. 3 sources, full AI classification, email alerts, Slack, webhooks, dead man's switch. No credit card. No time limit. No gotchas.

Stop finding out the hard way

Your infrastructure sends the emails. Let CanaryAlert actually read them.

3 sources. Full AI. No credit card. No time limit.