What it does
Connects uptime monitoring to Twilio voice calls so on-call staff get instant phone alerts when downtime occurs.
Why I recommend it
SMS or email can be missed. Phone calls cut through noise for mission-critical outages.
Expected benefits
- Faster response to outages
- Reduced revenue loss
- Clear on-call accountability
- Improved incident response metrics
How it works
Monitoring service (UptimeRobot, Pingdom) detects failure -> webhook triggers Twilio voice call/IVR -> deliver message with site, status, and instructions -> log acknowledgement.
Quick start
Set up simple SMS alert first, then add phone call escalation for severity 1 sites.
Level-up version
Support multi-recipient escalation, allow keypad responses to acknowledge, and integrate with PagerDuty schedules.
Tools you can use
Monitoring: UptimeRobot, BetterUptime
Voice: Twilio, Telnyx
Automation: Zapier, custom webhooks
Also works with
API uptime, ecommerce checkout monitors, DNS outage alerts.
Technical implementation solution
- No-code: UptimeRobot webhook -> Zapier -> Twilio call.
- API-based: Pingdom alert -> Lambda -> Twilio Voice -> PagerDuty ack tracking.
Where it gets tricky
Preventing false positives from brief blips, managing international phone calls, and ensuring alerts stop after acknowledgement.
