Three ways to get downtime alerts
🔔 Native OS notifications
DeskUptime watches every URL you add and fires a real macOS/Windows notification when a site goes DOWN and again when it is back UP. No inbox, no missed emails.
⏱️ Intervals from 1 minute
Pick 1, 5, 10 or 30 minutes per watchlist. A built-in floor of 60 seconds keeps you polite to your own server.
💾 Your data stays yours
The URL list and history live in a local file on your machine, and no monitoring service ever sees them. The app does send your licence key, a stable device ID and the product ID deskuptime-pro to a licence server over HTTPS the first time you enter the key — that is the one network call it makes beyond the sites you check.
Prefer the terminal? The same engine ships as a CLI: deskuptime check runs a round right now and exits non-zero if anything is down — easy to wire into scripts.
Set it up in two minutes
- Download DeskUptime for macOS or Windows below.
- Add URLs to your watch list.
- Choose an interval and leave the app running in the menu bar / tray.
What you pay
| Option | Cost | Catch |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud SaaS monitor | $10–15/month | Recurring forever, URL list leaves your machine |
| cron + curl + mail | Free | You maintain the script and a mail relay |
| DeskUptime | $19 once | Notifications only while the app runs |
The notification only arrives while the app runs. Pro covers the other half.
Everything above is free, and it stays free: the monitoring on your own machine,
deskuptime check from the terminal, and the three things the CLI does
without a key — one-off checks, SSL and content checks, and JSON output. No
account, no licence key, no trial.
Pro adds exactly five things, and all five are named limits in this article's own text. The first is the one just mentioned: the notification channel disappears when the computer is closed. Webhook alerts pass the outage on to Slack, Teams or PagerDuty from a machine that stays on, so the failure reaches you while you sleep. The second is the pace: this article recommends every 5 minutes, and the menu stops at 1, 5, 10 and 30 minutes with a floor of 60 seconds. Pro brings it down to 30 seconds. The third is the count: unlimited sites instead of the three watch mode covers today — for an agency that is your clients' sites, not site number four. The fourth is what you attach when the client asks: a client-ready report in Markdown and JSON. And the fifth is the desktop app you already downloaded above — in version 0.2.7 it downloads without payment, but the Pro features inside it only unlock once the licence is activated; they work in the CLI today.
| What you get | Free | DeskUptime Pro — $19 once |
|---|---|---|
This guide, the app above and deskuptime check from the terminal | the whole page and the toolkit | the same |
| Checking any number of URLs, one at a time | one-off checks | the same |
| Certificate expiry and silent content changes | SSL and content checks | the same checks |
| Machine-readable output for scripts and notifications | JSON output | the same |
| Where you see the outage | in the notification, only while the machine runs | system tray and notifications in the desktop app |
| How the failure reaches you when the machine is closed | you see it first when you are at the desk | webhook alerts — Slack, Teams, PagerDuty |
| How often a site is checked | every 1st, 5th, 10th or 30th minute | every 30 seconds |
| How many sites you watch | three URLs in watch mode | unlimited sites |
| What you attach when the client asks | — | client-ready report |
One price, three machines — the licence activates on the machine you run it on, not per site. If every 5 minutes and a notification you see yourself is plenty for your one site, you already have the whole answer.
FAQ
How do I get notified when my website goes down?
The simplest free way is a small script or app on your own machine that checks your URL every few minutes and sends an OS notification when the status changes. DeskUptime does exactly this: add your URLs, pick an interval from 1 minute, and you get a native notification the moment a site goes down and when it comes back.
Is there a free alternative to uptime monitoring SaaS?
Yes. Cloud SaaS monitors charge $10–15 per month per project for what is essentially a scheduled HTTP request plus an email. A desktop monitor like DeskUptime is a one-time purchase, keeps your URL list private on your machine, and never has a monthly fee.
How often should my site be checked?
For most sites every 5 minutes is plenty — it catches outages within minutes without hammering your server. DeskUptime enforces a minimum of 60 seconds between checks of the same URL and supports 1, 5, 10 and 30 minute intervals.
Will I know when the site comes back up?
Yes — recovery alerts matter as much as downtime alerts. DeskUptime compares each result to the previous status and notifies you both when a site goes DOWN and when it is back UP.
Does anything run in the cloud?
No. Checks run from your own computer, so your URL list and results stay private. The trade-off: notifications only arrive while the app is running, which for freelancers and small teams watching their own sites is exactly when they want them.
Related: Dansk version · Monitor guide · MacOS menu bar website monitor