Quickstart

This guide walks you through your first run with StatusRadar: create an account, add a monitor, install the agent on a server, publish a status page, and set up alerts. Each step links to deeper documentation when you're ready for the details.

If you want the big picture first, read the Overview.

Step 1 β€” Create an account

  1. Sign up at statusradar.dev and verify your email.
  2. (Recommended) Enable 2FA at Settings β†’ Security β€” TOTP with Argon2-hashed recovery codes.
  3. Your account starts on a plan that defines your quotas (monitors, status pages, servers, team seats, retention, and observability volume).

Working with a team? Invite people at Settings β†’ Team and assign roles (owner, admin, member, viewer). Seats are tied to your plan.

Step 2 β€” Add your first monitor

A monitor watches a single endpoint or resource from distributed probes.

  1. Go to Dashboard β†’ Monitors β†’ Create (/dashboard/monitors/create).
  2. Pick a type β€” HTTP/HTTPS, SSL, TCP, Ping, DNS, or Server.
  3. Fill in the basics:
    • Name β€” a human label, e.g. Marketing site
    • Target β€” the URL, host, or record to check, e.g. https://example.com
    • Interval (interval_seconds), Timeout (timeout_seconds), Retries (retry_count)
    • Probe servers β€” one or more locations to check from
  4. Set the per-type options that apply:
    • HTTP/HTTPS: method, expected_status, expected_string, headers, follow_redirects
    • SSL: alert_days_before_expiry
    • TCP: port
    • DNS: dns_record_type, dns_expected
  5. Save. The monitor shows as pending until the first check arrives, then flips to up or down.

Prefer the API? Create a user API token at Settings β†’ API and POST to the User API:

curl -X POST https://api.statusradar.dev/v1/monitors \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"type":"http","name":"Marketing site","target":"https://example.com","interval_seconds":60}'

β†’ Full details: Monitors overview

Step 3 β€” Install the agent on a server

To monitor the inside of a server (CPU, memory, disk, network, and services), install the StatusRadar agent.

  1. Go to Dashboard β†’ Servers β†’ Add (/dashboard/servers/add) to get your agent token.
  2. On the server, run the one-line installer with your token in the TOKEN env var:
TOKEN='your-agent-token' bash -c "$(curl -sL https://statusradar.dev/install-agent.sh)"
  1. To monitor services too, enable plugins at install time. Plugin settings are passed as env vars:
PLUGINS='redis,nginx' \
REDIS_HOST='localhost' REDIS_PORT='6379' \
NGINX_STATUS_URL='http://127.0.0.1/nginx_status' \
TOKEN='your-agent-token' \
bash -c "$(curl -sL https://statusradar.dev/install-agent.sh)"

The installer downloads the agent to /opt/statusradar, writes a shell environment file at /opt/statusradar/config.env, creates the statusradar-agent systemd service, and starts collecting. Verify it's running:

sudo systemctl status statusradar-agent

Then refresh Dashboard β†’ Servers to see live metrics. To add or change plugin settings later, edit /opt/statusradar/config.env and run sudo systemctl restart statusradar-agent.

Requirements: Linux with Python 3.6+. The installer auto-detects your package manager (apt, dnf/yum, zypper, pacman, apk). Windows and macOS aren't supported.

β†’ Full details: Agent installation

Step 4 β€” Create a status page

Publish a page so your users can see your service status.

  1. Go to Dashboard β†’ Status Pages β†’ Create (/dashboard/status-pages/create).
  2. Set:
    • Slug β€” the public URL segment; the page lives at /status/{slug}
    • Visibility β€” public or private
    • Theme β€” primary color and layout
    • History β€” how many days of uptime to show (show_history_days: 30, 60, 90, 180, or 365)
  3. Save, then assign monitors to the page from the manage-monitors screen.
  4. Share the public URL, e.g. https://statusradar.dev/status/your-slug.

β†’ Full details: Status pages setup

Step 5 β€” Set up alerts

Get notified the moment something breaks.

  1. Add notification channels under Dashboard β†’ Alerts β€” email, Slack, Telegram, Discord, webhooks, SMS, or voice.
  2. Configure when alerts fire:
    • Failure / recovery thresholds β€” how many consecutive failures trigger an alert, and when recovery clears it
    • SSL expiry β€” warn before a certificate expires
    • Anomaly detection β€” ML-based alerts on unusual response times, error rates, or resource usage
  3. Choose which channels each alert uses; grouping and throttling reduce noise.

When an alert fires it can open an incident, which you acknowledge and resolve while posting updates that appear on your status page.

β†’ Full details: Alerts overview

You're up and running

You now have an external monitor, a monitored server, a public status page, and alerts wired to your team. From here, explore deeper:

Next Steps