Dependency Monitors: Track the Third-Party Services You Rely On

Your uptime does not only depend on your own servers. If Stripe stops taking payments, Slack goes quiet, or your AI provider has an incident, your customers feel it even though every one of your monitors is green.

Dependency Monitors let you follow the official status pages of the services you depend on. Pulsetic watches those status pages for you, emails you when one of them reports an incident, and lets you show their status on your own status page so your customers can see the cause without opening a ticket.

Who can do what:

• Owner, Admin and Editor can add dependencies, change alert settings and delete them.
• Viewer and Accountant can see the dashboard and each dependency's Overview, but cannot change anything.

Step 1: Add a dependency

1. Log in to your Pulsetic account.
2. On the left-hand menu, click Dependencies.
3. Click the Add Dependency button in the upper right corner. The Add Dependency Monitor window will appear.
4. Search for the service you need. The search box matches the company name or its domain, so both stripe  and stripe.com  will find Stripe.
5. Click Add next to the service. Services you have already added show a green check and the label Added instead.

The service starts reporting within a few minutes. You can add as many services as your plan allows, and the counter at the top right of the window (for example 3 / 10 used) shows where you stand.

If the service you need is not listed

Our catalog covers thousands of services, but not every one of them. Search for the service, and when no results come back click Contact us in the Can't find what you need? line. That opens a message to our team pre-filled with the name you searched for. We review every suggestion and add services regularly.

Step 2: Read your dependency dashboard

The Dependencies page lists everything you are tracking, with uptime over 24 hours, 30 days and 90 days, and the number of incidents in the last 90 days.

Each service shows one of six statuses:

Click any row to open that service. Click the ... menu at the end of a row for shortcuts to Overview and Alerts, to turn alerts on or off without opening the service, or to delete it.

Sorting and filtering

Click View Options to change what you see.

Under Show, pick one of:

• All dependencies
• Active incidents, which keeps only services currently having a problem
• Operational
• Alerts off, which shows the services you have muted

Under Sort By, pick one of: Newest first, Oldest first, Name (A-Z), Name (Z-A), Status (Worst), Uptime 24h (Lowest), Incidents 90d (Most), or Custom.

Putting the list in your own order

Custom is the default sort, and it lets you drag services into whatever order makes sense to you, with the most business-critical ones at the top.

Hover over a row and a drag handle appears on its left edge. Drag the row where you want it. You can also focus the handle with the keyboard and use the Up and Down arrow keys, which works across pages.

Dragging is only available when Sort By is set to Custom and Show is set to All dependencies. Choosing any other sort or filter hides the handle, because the list is then in an order Pulsetic controls.

Step 3: Review a single service

Click a service to open its Overview.

At the top, a banner tells you the current situation. When everything is fine it reads All systems operational, along with when the last incident was resolved. During an incident it shows the incident's name, its description, how long ago it started, and a View status page link straight to the vendor's own status page.

Below that you get eight figures at a glance: uptime over the last 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days and 90 days, the number of incidents in the last 90 days, how many of those were major and how many were minor, and the median time the service took to resolve them. Any figure we do not have enough history for reads Not enough data.

Response Time by Location, ms charts how quickly the service responded from each of our monitoring locations, so you can tell a global slowdown from a regional one. Use the dropdown above the chart to switch between Today, Yesterday, Last 7 days, This week, Last week, Last 30 days and This month. Your choice is remembered the next time you open a dependency.

Recent Incidents lists the incidents the service has reported, with the impact, whether it is resolved or ongoing, when it started and how long it lasted. Where the vendor published an incident page, the incident name links to it.

Step 4: Set up alerts

Open a service and click the Notifications tab.

Alerts

• Enable alerts controls whether this dependency emails you at all. Turn it off and the service keeps updating on your dashboard and status pages, but stays silent.
• Alert on decides how noisy it is. All incidents emails you about everything the vendor reports. Major outages only skips minor issues and scheduled maintenance, which is the right setting for services where you only want to hear about real trouble.

Click Save Changes to apply these two settings.

Recipients

Add the email addresses that should receive alerts for this dependency. Type an address, click Add Email, and it starts receiving alerts immediately. There is no need to click Save Changes for recipients. To remove someone, click the trash icon next to their address and confirm.

The number of recipients you can add per dependency is your account owner plus any notify-only seats on your plan. When you reach it, the add field is replaced by a note explaining your current limit. Owners and Admins get a link to add notify-only seats or upgrade; everyone else is told to ask an Owner or Admin.

Step 5: Show dependencies on your status page

Your customers can see the same information you do.

1. Open the status page you want to edit.
2. In the panel of available items, click the Dependencies tab.
3. Click a service to place it, or drag it into the section or group where you want it to appear.
4. Save the status page.

The dependency then appears alongside your own monitors, showing the vendor's current status. This turns "is it you or is it Stripe?" into something your customers can answer themselves.

How many dependencies you can track

Each plan includes a number of dependency monitors. You can add more at any time for $0.20 each per month. Go to Account → Add-ons, choose Dependency Monitors, set the number you need and click Checkout. Changes are prorated and billed through Stripe on your next invoice.

When you reach your limit, everything you already track keeps running. You simply cannot add another service until you buy more slots, upgrade your plan, or delete one you no longer need.

Deleting a dependency

Deleting stops all alerts for that service. Your historical data for it is removed, but you can add the service back from the catalog at any time.

The quickest way is the ... menu on its row in the dashboard, then Delete, then confirm.

You can also open the service, click the Delete tab, type delete  in the confirmation box and click Delete dependency monitor.

Troubleshooting

I do not see Dependencies in the menu. The feature is being rolled out gradually. Contact support and we will enable it for your account.

A service shows "Unknown". We could not read a clear status from the vendor's status page, usually because the vendor is changing how they publish it. This normally resolves itself. If it persists for more than a day, let us know.

I am not getting emails about a service. Open the service, click Notifications, and check that Enable alerts is on, that Alert on is not set to Major outages only when you expected to hear about smaller issues, and that your address is in the Recipients list.

A service is down but my uptime still shows 100%. Dependency uptime reflects what the vendor reports on their status page. Vendors often confirm an incident some minutes after it starts, and some never record short problems at all.