When a system goes down at 2 in the morning, someone's phone rings. AlertBot watches your IP addresses and mailboxes and phones whoever is on call through the Webex App - it reads out what went wrong, and keeps calling down the list until someone acknowledges.
Email alerts get missed at night, and a dashboard only helps if someone is looking at it. AlertBot runs as a Windows service on a VM of yours. It pings your switches, servers and links (or checks a TCP port), and reads the mailboxes your monitoring tools send alerts to. When something stays down, or a matching email arrives, it phones the right team through the Webex App, greets the person by name and reads the alert out in a natural voice: which site, which system, what's wrong, how urgent, and what to do next. It repeats the call and moves down the list until someone acknowledges - on the call itself, or in the console.
An example of a message as AlertBot reads it, made up for this page. Every part comes from the IP target or email rule that raised the alert.
Good morning, Thandi. This is AlertBot with an automated alert. Site: Main data centre. System affected: Core switch. Alert type: Not responding to ping. Priority: Critical. Next steps: Check the switch, then acknowledge the alert in the AlertBot console. Repeating.
Ping a device, or check a TCP port for hosts that block ping. The first dropped check speeds the checks up; three drops inside the window raise the alert - so a link that flaps still alerts - and good checks in a row close it by itself.
Point it at the IMAP mailboxes your monitoring, backup and security tools write to. A rule matches on From, Subject and Body - with alternatives such as DOWN; CRITICAL - and either calls or just records the email on the Events page.
Separate teams - Network, Mail, Servers - each with its own people in escalation order, its own repeat interval and its own most calls per alert. Every IP target and email rule picks the group it phones.
The message is spoken by a bundled neural voice that runs on the VM itself - nothing is sent to a speech service. If it can't run, Windows' own voice reads the message instead.
A failed switch that takes ten IPs down rings once: alerts for the same group raised close together share a call. Different groups never wait for each other.
Press Acknowledge on the Alerts or Calls page, or reply on the call, and nobody is called again for that alert. Until then the calls repeat and move down the list.
A heartbeat to an outside monitor such as Healthchecks.io or Uptime Kuma, sent only while AlertBot can call, and scheduled test calls for each team - so you hear about it when AlertBot itself can't phone anyone.
The call in progress with its phase, each open alert's escalation ladder, the last 7 days of calls, every event, and the Webex, voice and service status - with settings picked up by the service within seconds.
Export every target, mailbox, rule, number and voice setting to one file and import it on another VM. Mailbox passwords stay encrypted for the machine and are never exported.
Every number below is a setting you can change per target, rule or group - these are the defaults.
AlertBot can't phone anyone about itself, so the Watchdog page sets up two checks from outside.
Try every feature free for 14 days, then pick the plan that suits you. Prices are in Rand, with the US dollar equivalent as a guide; checkout is PayFast's secure payment page.
Pay a year at a time, cancel whenever you like
Pay once, yours for good
Each licence is for one machine - the VM AlertBot runs on. Need AlertBot on several VMs? Talk to us.
Download the zip, copy it to the VM and extract it. Then, from PowerShell run as administrator in that folder:
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\Install-AlertBot.ps1 -DesktopShortcut
That installs AlertBot, starts its service and adds the console to the Start menu; running it again upgrades in place and keeps your settings. Open the console and confirm the email you downloaded it with: every feature is on for 14 days, no card needed. When you buy, we email your licence key; paste it into the console's Licence page and you're done. Without a licence or trial, AlertBot keeps watching and recording alerts, but phones nobody.
Download AlertBot 1.10.1AlertBot-1.10.1-win-x64.zip - 373.5 MB - Windows, 64-bit
A Windows service has no desktop, so it can't drive the Webex App itself. When a call is due, AlertBot starts its dialer in the signed-in user's session, where it opens the call link just like clicking a click-to-call link. Use Sysinternals Autologon so the user signs in again after a reboot; a locked or disconnected session is fine, signing out is not.
No - Webex doesn't report that, and a voicemail greeting would sound just like an answer. So AlertBot listens on the call: it starts the message when the person speaks or the ringing stops, and it treats a reply after the message as the acknowledgement. The calls repeat until someone acknowledges.
AlertBot keeps watching your IPs and mailboxes and records every alert, but phones nobody, and the console, the Dashboard and the heartbeat say why. Activate a licence on the Licence page and the calls start again within seconds. If the StreamSoft licence server can't be reached, a licensed AlertBot keeps calling for up to 30 days.
No. The voice is made on the VM, the calls go out through your own Webex, and your targets, mailboxes and numbers stay in AlertBot's data folder, which only SYSTEM and administrators can read. AlertBot only goes online to your mailboxes, the heartbeat URL you set, and StreamSoft's licence check.
Not directly: Microsoft 365 only allows IMAP sign-in with OAuth, not a password. Forward the alerts to a mailbox that allows IMAP password sign-in and point AlertBot at that one. Gmail works with IMAP turned on and an app password.
Download the new zip from this page, extract it on the VM and run Install-AlertBot.ps1 again: it upgrades in place, and your settings, alerts and history are kept. The console's Updates page lists what changed in each version.
Yearly costs R588 a year (R49 a month) and renews until you cancel. Lifetime is R999 once and never renews. If you'll use AlertBot for more than about two years, Lifetime costs less.
Sign in to your StreamSoft account and choose Cancel subscription on the order. AlertBot keeps calling until the year you've paid for ends, and you won't be charged again.
One. Moving AlertBot to a new VM? Export the settings, choose Deactivate on the Licence page, then import and activate on the new one - or ask us to free the licence. For several VMs, get in touch.
Checkout is PayFast's secure page, so we never see your card details. We email your licence key once the payment has gone through.
Fourteen days free with everything on - then R49 a month billed yearly, or R999 once.
Start your free trial