OnlineOrNot updates from May 2026

Last month I focused on adding Telegram alerts to OnlineOrNot, making scripted browser checks generally available, and making it clearer to understand why checks fail.

Table of contents

• What's new
  • Features for Alerts
    • Telegram alerting
  • Features for Browser Checks
    • Scripted browser checks
    • Better failure details
    • More reliable browser checks
  • Features for the Dashboard
    • Better check results explorer
  • Features for Status Pages
    • Better custom domain handling

What's new

Features for Alerts

Telegram alerting

OnlineOrNot now supports Telegram alerts.

You can connect Telegram from the dashboard and receive alerts for uptime checks and heartbeat checks, alongside the existing Slack, Discord, email, and webhook options.

If your team already coordinates incidents in Telegram, OnlineOrNot can now send downtime and recovery alerts there too. It supports private chats, groups/supergroups, and channels. See the docs to get started.

Features for Browser Checks

Scripted browser checks

OnlineOrNot now supports scripted browser checks via Playwright.

Regular uptime checks are still the right default for APIs, health endpoints, and simple pages. Browser checks are for the flows where "the URL returned HTTP 200" isn't enough.

They're useful for monitoring things like:

• Login flows
• Checkout and payment pages
• Dashboards behind JavaScript-heavy frontends
• Forms and customer portals
• "The app loads, but the important action is broken" failures

Scripted browser checks are powered by Playwright scripts, so they're best suited for technical teams right now. If you already know the flow you care about, you can script it directly, draft it with an LLM, or use this as a reason to finally turn your most painful manual smoke test into monitoring.

You can create a scripted browser check here.

Better failure details

Scripted browser checks also include clearer failure details when something goes wrong.

Instead of only seeing that a browser check failed, alerts can now include more useful context about the failure, helping you understand what broke faster.

Features for the Dashboard

Better check results explorer

The check results explorer has been improved to make recent check activity easier to inspect.

This should make it simpler to understand what happened during a failure, retry, or recovery.

Features for Status Pages

Better custom domain handling

Status page custom domains are now easier to manage and more reliable to visit.

OnlineOrNot now handles custom domains consistently whether you enter example.com, https://example.com, or include a trailing slash. Dashboard links now open the right public status page URL, and visitors see clearer messages if a custom-domain status page is unavailable.