Sign in Start free trial

FAQ

The questions agencies actually ask, answered plainly. No fluff, no hedging — a real answer to each one.

Getting started & setup

What is DeadWatch, in one sentence?

DeadWatch watches the vital signs of every website you manage — uptime, speed, layout, SEO, DNS, SSL, and security — and alerts you the moment one drops, before your client notices.

What's the difference between DeadWatch and Kestrel?

DeadWatch is the vigil over sites you already manage — it keeps your clients. Kestrel is the growth side — it scans a prospect's website, produces an honest diagnostic report you can send and sell, and helps you win the next client. Kestrel is an add-on to the Agency plan.

How long does setup take?

Minutes. You get your own instance at your own subdomain, add a site by its URL, pick a check interval, and connect a notification channel. There's no agent to install on the sites you monitor — DeadWatch checks them from the outside, the same way a visitor reaches them.

Do I need to install anything on my clients' sites?

No. Uptime, speed, VRT, SEO, DNS, SSL, and security checks all run externally against the public site. Nothing to deploy, no plugin required on the monitored site.

How many sites can I add?

The Agency plan includes 50 sites and lets you add more at $1.50 per site per month. The free trial lets you monitor a smaller set of your own sites so you can see how it works first.

Can I import my whole client roster at once?

Yes — add sites and organize them by client so your whole board is grouped and readable. See Add and organize sites.

What check interval should I use?

Match it to the site's importance. A busy client storefront warrants a tight interval (near real-time detection); a low-traffic brochure site can run wider. Tighter intervals detect faster; the monitoring reference explains the trade-off.

Monitoring & alerts

How fast do I know when a site goes down?

Detection is your check interval plus one confirmation re-check from a different region — roughly 30 to 90 seconds at a 60-second interval. The confirmation step is why a one-off network blip won't wake you, but a real outage will.

Why the confirmation re-check — doesn't that slow me down?

It's a deliberate trade. When a check fails, DeadWatch re-checks from another region before declaring an incident. That extra step is the difference between "your monitoring cried wolf again" and an alert your team actually trusts. Real outages still page you in well under two minutes at a tight interval.

What exactly does DeadWatch watch?

Uptime and incidents, visual regression (VRT), Web Vitals (speed), SEO signals (robots, sitemap, canonical), DNS records, SSL/TLS certificates, security and hardening posture, content drift, link health, and asset changes. The monitoring reference breaks down each one.

What does "visual regression" actually catch?

DeadWatch screenshots each page and compares it to an approved baseline, per breakpoint. When a deploy breaks a header, shifts the layout, or a third-party script mangles the page, you get a pixel diff — before your client notices the site looks wrong.

What's a "baseline" and how do I set one?

A baseline is the approved, known-good screenshot of a page at a given breakpoint. Future screenshots are compared against it. When a legitimate redesign lands, you approve the new look as the baseline so it stops flagging. See Visual regression.

Will small, expected changes (like a blog feed) trigger VRT alerts constantly?

VRT compares against the approved baseline per breakpoint, so genuinely dynamic areas can be noisy if left unmanaged. The workflow is to approve intended changes as the new baseline; that resets the comparison so only unexpected shifts flag. The VRT guide covers managing dynamic content.

How does DeadWatch avoid false alarms?

Two ways. First, the cross-region confirmation re-check filters out transient blips. Second, flapping protection suppresses alert storms when a site rapidly bounces between up and down, so you get one meaningful signal instead of fifty.

What is flapping protection?

When a site oscillates up-and-down-and-up in a short window, that's "flapping." Rather than paging you on every flip, DeadWatch dampens the noise and surfaces the pattern as one situation to look at. It keeps a struggling server from turning into an alert storm.

Can I pause alerts during a planned deploy or maintenance?

Yes — use maintenance windows. During a window, checks still run but alerts are held back, so a planned deploy or migration doesn't page the whole team. See Notifications and incidents.

Where can DeadWatch send alerts?

Email, Slack, Discord, and generic webhooks. You can route different sites or clients to different channels, so a client-facing Slack gets uptime and your internal channel gets the noisy detail.

What's an "incident"?

When a real outage is confirmed, DeadWatch groups the related failing checks into a single incident with a start and a resolution — instead of a stream of disconnected alerts. That gives you one clean record of what happened and how long it lasted.

Does it monitor Web Vitals like Google uses?

Yes — LCP, CLS, TBT, TTFB, and related metrics, with real-user (CrUX) data where it's available. Slow pages cost your client rankings and conversions, so catching a regression early is part of the watch.

Does it check SSL certificate expiry?

Yes. DeadWatch tracks certificate validity and warns you well before a cert expires — the kind of quiet failure that takes a site down without a single error being thrown.

What security signals does it flag?

Header posture, exposed files, and hijacking signals — redirect hijacking, cloaking, spam injection, and hidden links — so you catch a compromise before it wrecks your client's reputation or search standing. See Security monitoring.

Can I monitor a staging or password-protected site?

DeadWatch checks sites the way a visitor reaches them, so publicly reachable staging URLs work. Sites behind auth or IP allowlists depend on your setup — reach out and we'll talk through what's possible for your environment.

Kestrel & selling reports

What is Kestrel for?

Cold outreach is easy to ignore; a specific, true report about a prospect's own site is not. Kestrel finds the prospect, scans their site, and hands you a diagnostic worth sending — one you can also sell.

How accurate is the Kestrel report?

Every finding is grounded in a real check against the prospect's site — no invented issues. Reports carry a plain disclaimer that automated scans are a diagnostic guide to reach best-practice benchmarks, not a guarantee, and that critical findings should be verified. Honest reports are the ones prospects trust.

What does the report actually check?

SEO signals, page speed and mobile performance, and security posture — the same classes of check DeadWatch runs, packaged into a branded, readable report. The Kestrel diagnostics reference lists what's covered.

Why put a disclaimer on a report I'm trying to sell?

Because the disclaimer is what makes it credible. An automated scan is a guide toward best-practice benchmarks, not a courtroom verdict — saying so plainly is what separates your report from the fake-urgency "your site has 47 critical errors" spam prospects have learned to ignore.

Can I sell the reports and keep the revenue?

Yes. Kestrel runs Stripe checkout under your account, delivers the branded PDF automatically, and issues a single-use coupon for a free follow-up scan so buyers come back for the re-audit. The money is yours.

How does payment work?

Checkout runs through Stripe under your own account. When a buyer pays, the report PDF is delivered automatically. See Sell a report with Kestrel for connecting Stripe.

What's the free follow-up scan coupon?

Each sale can include a single-use coupon that entitles the buyer to a free follow-up scan later. It's the hook for the re-audit conversation: they fix things, you re-scan, and you show the improvement — a natural bridge to an ongoing engagement.

How is the report delivered to the buyer?

As a PDF, automatically, after checkout. Because the report is sent as an email attachment, your email provider must be able to send attachments — a send-only or attachment-blocked provider won't deliver it. Check your provider before your first sale.

My report didn't get delivered — what's the first thing to check?

Confirm your email provider supports sending attachments. Reports go out as PDF attachments, so a provider that strips or blocks attachments is the most common cause of a non-delivery.

Can I brand the report with my agency's identity?

Yes — the report is designed to go out under your brand so the prospect sees your agency, not ours. It's your sales asset.

Is this cold-emailing spam?

Kestrel gives you a real, specific diagnostic about a prospect's actual website — that's the opposite of boilerplate spam. How you contact prospects is on you; follow the anti-spam and consent laws that apply where you and your prospects operate.

Pricing & billing

What does the Agency plan cost?

$149/month. It includes 50 sites and every monitor — uptime, VRT, Web Vitals, SEO, SSL, DNS, and security — plus incidents, notification routing, and teams and client access.

What happens when I hit my site limit?

Nothing breaks. The Agency plan includes 50 sites and bills $1.50 for each additional site — so a busy month never means a surprise outage or a locked account.

How does overage billing work?

Sites beyond the included 50 are billed at $1.50 per site per month. You add sites as your roster grows; there are no per-seat charges layered on top.

Is there a free trial?

Yes — 14 days, no card required to start. Bring your own sites and see exactly what DeadWatch catches before you pay anything.

How much does Kestrel cost?

Kestrel is an add-on to the Agency plan. For current add-on pricing, reach out — the landing page's Kestrel tier links to a conversation rather than self-serve signup.

Can I upgrade from the trial without losing my setup?

Yes. The sites, intervals, and notification channels you configure during the trial carry straight into your paid plan — you're not starting over.

How do I cancel?

You can cancel your subscription; monitoring continues through the period you've paid for. See Data, security & hosting below for how to export your data before you go.

Do you charge per team member?

No. The Agency plan is a flat plan for your whole roster — no per-seat games. Teams and client access are included.

Data, security & hosting

Do I host DeadWatch, or do you?

We do. You get your own instance on your own subdomain — your data in your own database, never mixed with another agency's. You manage sites; we manage the platform and ship updates. DeadWatch is also self-hostable in principle if that's a requirement for you — talk to us.

What does "your own instance" mean, exactly?

Each agency gets a dedicated instance with its own database. Your sites, results, incidents, and client data live in your tenant and are never commingled with another agency's data. It's isolation by tenant, not just a row-level filter in a shared table.

Who can see my data?

Your team, at the access levels you grant, and the operators who keep the platform running. Another tenant on DeadWatch cannot see your sites or results — the data lives in a separate database per agency.

Where does the monitoring data live?

In your tenant's own database on the hosted platform. Check results, incident history, VRT screenshots, and configuration are stored there for your instance.

Can I export my data?

Yes. Your monitoring history and configuration are yours; you can export them. If you need a specific export format for an offboarding or migration, tell us what you need.

What happens to my data if I cancel?

Your data remains yours to export. When you offboard, we can provide your data and then decommission your instance. Nothing is silently held hostage — reach out and we'll walk through the offboarding steps.

Is my client data secure?

Per-tenant database isolation is the foundation — your data is never in the same database as another agency's. Combine that with scoped team and client roles so people only see what they should. Security posture is something we take as seriously for our own platform as DeadWatch does for the sites it watches.

Can I run DeadWatch on my own servers?

It's self-hostable in principle. In practice most agencies choose the hosted SaaS so they don't run the infrastructure. If self-hosting is a hard requirement, get in touch and we'll discuss it.

Teams & clients

Can I invite my whole team?

Yes, and there's no per-seat charge — team access is part of the flat plan. Invite teammates and assign roles so the right people see the right sites. See Teams and client access.

Can clients see their own site's status?

Yes. You can give a client scoped access to their own sites — so they see their uptime and health without seeing your other clients or the full agency board.

Do clients see my whole roster?

No. Client access is scoped to the sites you grant them. A client sees their sites; your roster and other clients stay private.

What roles are available?

Roles range from full agency team members to scoped client access. You control who can manage sites, who can only view, and which sites each person or client can reach. The teams guide covers the specifics.

Can I route a specific client's alerts to their own Slack?

Yes — notification routing lets you send a client's alerts to a channel they're in (their Slack, an email, or a webhook) while keeping noisier internal detail on your own channels. See Notifications and incidents.