Website down alert on Telegram
Add @logdash_uptime_bot to a Telegram chat or group, send it the one-time passphrase Logdash shows you, and the bot posts a red-dot down message on the first failed check and a green-dot up message when the site recovers.
Telegram is the one alert channel Logdash ships end to end, with its own bot. There is no BotFather step, no bot token to store and no chat ID to dig out of a getUpdates response. You add one bot to a chat, send it one line of text, and the chat is connected. It works the same on the free Hobby plan as on Builder and Pro.
How the Telegram uptime monitoring bot connects
- In the monitor's Alerts card, click Add channel and pick Telegram. Logdash shows a one-time passphrase shaped like
/swift_otter_9f2c41d07ab3e655: two words and 16 hex characters, so 64 random bits. - Open a private chat with
@logdash_uptime_bot, or add it to a group, and send the passphrase there as a normal message. - Click Message sent. The dashboard asks every 2 seconds whether the passphrase arrived, then shows the chat name. The passphrase works once and expires 60 seconds after the bot receives it, so a leaked screenshot is worth nothing.
- Tick the box that assigns the channel to the monitor, then save. The bot posts "Setup was completed successfully" in the chat, so you know delivery works before anything breaks.
Broadcast channels are not supported, only private chats and groups. A group is the usual answer for a co-founder or a small team: everyone in it sees the same alert.
What the Telegram downtime alert says
One message when a check flips to down, one when it flips back. Nothing repeats while the site stays down, so a 40-minute outage is two messages, not 40. The down message carries the monitor name, the HTTP status code and the first part of the response body, or the network error when nothing answered: "Connection refused" or "Timed out after 10s".
The alert can only be as honest as the endpoint it watches. Logdash marks a check down on any status outside 200-399, on a connection error, or when nothing answers in 10 seconds. A health route that returns 200 while the database is gone never pages anyone, so make it touch the database:
import express from 'express';
import { pool } from './db.js';
const app = express();
app.get('/health', async (req, res) => {
try {
await pool.query('select 1');
res.status(200).json({ ok: true });
} catch {
// 503 is what turns a dead database into a Telegram message
res.status(503).json({ ok: false, error: 'db' });
}
});
app.listen(3000);- Add the URL Create a service and paste the health URL. Logdash checks it every 5 minutes on Hobby, every minute on Builder ($9/month) and every 15 seconds on Pro ($15/month).
- Connect Telegram Add @logdash_uptime_bot to the chat, send the passphrase, and save the channel to the monitor. The welcome message lands in the chat straight away.
- Break it once Stop the database and leave the app running. The next check gets a 503 and the Telegram alert arrives with the status code and the error body. Start the database again and the green up message follows on the next check.
Uptime Kuma Telegram vs Logdash
Kuma 2.5 has a good Telegram provider with more knobs than Logdash. The cost is the setup: you create your own bot first, and the sender lives on a server you also have to keep alive.
Telegram alerts: Logdash vs Uptime Kuma
| Feature | Logdash | Uptime Kuma |
|---|---|---|
| Setup | Add one bot, send one passphrase | Create a bot in BotFather, paste the token, find the chat ID |
| Bot identity | Shared @logdash_uptime_bot | Your own bot, your name and avatar |
| Message options | One fixed format | Templates, silent sends, forum topics |
| Alert after | The first failed check | A configurable number of retries |
| Where the sender runs | Hosted, outside your stack | Your server, and it goes down with it |
| Price | Free on Hobby | Free, plus the server |
When Uptime Kuma is the better pick
- You already run Kuma on a box you trust. With a BotFather token in hand its Telegram setup takes five minutes.
- You want alerts from your own bot under your own name, sent silently or into a forum topic.
- You only want to hear about it after three failed checks in a row. Logdash alerts on the first one.