An alert watches one thing and mails you when it happens: traffic rising, traffic falling, or a goal firing. Alerts are per site, and they go to whoever created them.
Three kinds
Traffic rises
A post lands, a link gets shared, something is working. You find out while it is still happening.
Traffic falls
Usually the tag broke, or a deploy removed it. This is the alert that pays for itself.
A goal fires
A signup, a purchase, whatever you track. Arrives as it happens.
Two ways to compare traffic
This is the choice that decides whether your alert is useful or noise.
Against a fixed number — fires when the last hour crosses a count you set. Simple, and right for a site whose traffic is usually near zero.
Against the same hour last week — fires on the movement rather than the level. Thirty visitors in an hour means nothing on its own: it is a quiet hour for one site and a tenfold spike for another. Comparing against the same hour seven days ago knows the difference, and it ignores the fact that Tuesday mornings are busier than Sunday nights.
If your site gets steady traffic, use the comparison. A fixed threshold on a busy site fires every hour until you turn it off.
An alert set to compare never fires when there was no traffic at all in the matching hour last week — a site with nothing to compare against has not risen by infinity, and treating that as a spike would greet every new site with a false alarm.
Writing the message
A new alert opens with a template already written in, so you edit rather than start from nothing:
Subject: New {{goal.name}} from {{visitor.country}}
Message: Hi {{account.name}},
{{goal.name}} just happened on {{site.domain}}.
- Country: {{visitor.country}}
- Referrer: {{visitor.referrer}}
- Page: {{visitor.page}}
- Device: {{visitor.device}} / {{visitor.browser}}Anything in {{double braces}} is replaced when the mail is sent. Change the
wording, delete the lines you do not care about, or clear a field entirely —
an empty field sends the default above.
These are the variables you can use:
| Variable | Becomes |
{{account.name}} | your name, for a greeting |
{{site.domain}} | your site's domain |
{{goal.name}} | the goal that fired |
{{goal.revenue}} | the revenue attached, if any |
{{visitor.country}} | where they were |
{{visitor.referrer}} | where they came from |
{{visitor.device}} / {{visitor.browser}} | what they used |
{{visitor.page}} | the page they were on |
{{current.visitors}} | visitors in the last hour |
The preview under the editor shows exactly what will be sent, rendered the same way the real mail is. A variable we cannot fill comes out blank and the editor says so before you save.
The alert editor with a goal trigger selected: trigger fields on the start side, subject and message with variables on the end side, and the preview below showing the rendered mail. Light theme.
Visitor variables are only filled for goal alerts — a traffic alert is about a window of time, not one person, so there is nobody to describe.
There is no variable for the visitor's name. We do not collect one: the
dashboard counts people without identifying them, and an alert cannot tell you
something the product deliberately never learns. {{account.name}} is your
name, for addressing the mail to yourself.
How often an alert can fire
Twice a day, per alert. An alert that could fire every hour would train you to ignore it, and a threshold set slightly too low would fill your inbox overnight.
Nothing is queued: if an alert would have fired a third time, it does not, and the alert says so on its row.
Why an alert did not arrive
Each alert shows what happened last time. "Held back" is a real answer, not a failure — it means we decided not to send:
| It says | It means |
| Last sent | It went out |
| Held back — already sent twice that day | The daily limit |
| Held back — you have alert mail turned off | Your email preferences |
| Held back — no active subscription | The account has lapsed |
| Failed | We tried and the mail bounced |
The Alerts tab with three alerts: one active showing "Last sent", one paused, and one showing a held-back line. The allowance counter is visible above. Light theme, cropped to the list.
Bots never trigger an alert
A goal alert fires for people, not crawlers. The dashboard filters bots when it reports, and alerts make the same distinction — an alert that fires for a bot teaches you to distrust the ones that are real.
How many you can have
Alerts are counted across your whole account, not per site: three on one site and none on another is the same as one on each of three. The number your plan includes is shown above the list, and the screen names the plan that lifts it when you run out.
Turning them off
Each alert has its own pause switch, which stops that one and keeps its settings. To stop all alert mail without deleting anything, use the link at the bottom of any alert email.