What is Echobell?

Echobell is an instant alert application designed to simplify notification management for developers, DevOps teams, and anyone who needs reliable, customizable alerts. It bridges the gap between your systems and your mobile device by handling webhooks and emails to trigger customized notifications or phone call-style alerts, ensuring you never miss important information.

Whether you're monitoring server infrastructure, tracking CI/CD pipelines, managing e-commerce operations, or coordinating team responses to critical events, Echobell provides a flexible, privacy-focused platform for instant notifications.

Core Features

Instant Alerts

Receive notifications in real-time when your channels are triggered. Whether it's a server outage, a failed build, or a critical business event, Echobell ensures the information reaches you immediately - typically within seconds of the trigger event.

Multiple Trigger Methods

Set up webhooks or email-based triggers to fit your existing infrastructure:

• Webhook Integration: Perfect for modern cloud services, monitoring tools, CI/CD pipelines, and any system that can make HTTP requests
• Email Triggers: Ideal for legacy systems, email-based alerts, or forwarding important messages

Both trigger methods support passing custom variables that populate your notification templates.

Customizable Notifications

Configure templates with dynamic variables to create informative, context-rich notifications. Instead of generic "Something happened" alerts, get specific information like "Production server CPU usage: 95%" or "Build #142 failed in deploy stage".

Templates support:

• Variable substitution with {{variableName}} syntax
• Object property access with {{user.name}}
• Array element access with {{items[0]}}
• Conditional expressions and logical operators

Subscription System

Create channels and let others subscribe to them using secure, shareable links. Perfect for:

• Team-wide incident notifications
• Public status updates
• Collaborative monitoring
• Shared alerting channels

Privacy-Focused Architecture

Only essential data is stored on our servers, while notification history stays on your device:

• Stored on servers: User accounts, channel configurations, subscription relationships
• Stored locally: Notification content, trigger history, alert records

This design ensures your sensitive operational data never leaves your control. Learn more in our privacy documentation.

Advanced Filtering with Conditions

Use conditional expressions to filter which triggers actually send notifications. For example:

• Only alert when CPU usage exceeds 80%
• Filter by specific HTTP headers
• Notify only during business hours
• Alert based on complex logical conditions

This prevents alert fatigue by ensuring you only receive notifications that matter.

How Echobell Works

Echobell operates on a simple but powerful workflow:

1. Trigger Reception: When a webhook is called or an email is received at a channel's unique address, Echobell's servers receive and validate the trigger.

2. Data Processing: The incoming data (query parameters, JSON body, or email content) is parsed and made available as variables.

3. Condition Evaluation: If the channel has conditions configured, they are evaluated against the trigger data. If conditions aren't met, the process stops here.

4. Template Rendering: The channel's notification templates are populated with the variables from the trigger, generating the final notification title and body.

5. Notification Delivery: The rendered notification is sent to all channel subscribers based on their chosen notification type (Normal, Time Sensitive, or Calling).

6. Local Storage: On the recipient's device, the notification record is stored locally with the rendered content, timestamp, and any associated links.

This architecture ensures fast delivery (typically under 1-2 seconds from trigger to notification) while maintaining privacy by keeping notification history on your device.

Real-World Example

Imagine you have a production server being monitored by Prometheus:

1. CPU usage exceeds 90%
2. Prometheus sends a webhook to your Echobell channel with variables: {"server": "prod-01", "cpu": 92, "severity": "critical"}
3. Your template "Server {{server}}: CPU at {{cpu}}%" renders as "Server prod-01: CPU at 92%"
4. The channel condition cpu > 80 evaluates to true
5. All subscribers receive the notification instantly on their iPhones
6. If subscribed as "Calling" type, their phones ring like an incoming call

Learn how to set this up in our Prometheus integration guide.

Key Concepts

Channels

A channel is the core entity in Echobell. Each channel:

• Has a distinct name and color for easy identification
• Contains notification templates for title and body content
• Can be triggered via webhook or email
• Can be shared with others using subscription links

Notification Types

When subscribing to a channel, you can choose from three notification types that determine how alerts appear and behave on your device:

• Normal (Active): Standard app notifications that appear in your notification center. Respects Do Not Disturb and Focus modes. Best for informational updates, non-urgent alerts, and general monitoring.

• Time Sensitive: High-priority notifications that can break through certain Focus modes. These appear prominently and are designed for important alerts that need attention soon but aren't critical emergencies. Examples: failed deployments, high resource usage, important business events.

• Calling: Call-like alerts with full-screen interface and ringtone, similar to receiving a phone call. These bypass all Do Not Disturb settings and are impossible to miss. Reserve these for critical incidents: production outages, security breaches, or emergency situations requiring immediate response.

The same channel can be subscribed to multiple times with different notification types if you want different urgency levels for the same alert source. For instance, you might subscribe to your production monitoring channel as "Time Sensitive" during work hours and "Calling" when you're on-call.

Read the complete notification guide to understand when to use each type and avoid alert fatigue.

Template Variables

Make your notifications dynamic by using variables in your templates:

Title: Server {{server_name}} is down!
Body: CPU usage reached {{cpu_usage}}%

When triggered with the appropriate variables, these templates generate personalized notifications.

Triggering Methods

Webhook Triggers

Trigger channels via HTTP requests with variables in query strings or JSON bodies:

GET https://hook.echobell.one/t/xxx?server_name=Production&cpu_usage=95

# OR

POST https://hook.echobell.one/t/xxx
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "server_name": "Production",
  "cpu_usage": 95
}

Special Variables

• externalLink: When included in the request, this variable will create a clickable link in the notification records view

Email Triggers

Send emails to channel-specific addresses. Echobell automatically extracts variables like:

• from: Sender's email address
• subject: Email subject line
• text: Plain text content
• html: HTML content

Privacy and Data Storage

Echobell is designed with privacy in mind:

• Only user data, channel configurations, and subscription information are stored on our servers
• Notification history and records remain exclusively on your local device

Getting Started

To start using Echobell, follow these steps:

1. Download the Echobell app from App Store (iOS 15.0 or later)
2. Sign in using your email address or Sign in with Apple for quick authentication
3. Create a channel with a descriptive name and choose an identifying color
4. Configure templates for your notification title and body
5. Get your webhook URL or email address from the channel's Triggers section
6. Integrate the trigger into your system or monitoring tool
7. Subscribe to your channel and choose the appropriate notification type
8. Test your setup with a test trigger to verify everything works

Follow our comprehensive getting started guide for detailed step-by-step instructions with screenshots.

Common Use Cases

Echobell is used by developers, operations teams, and businesses for a wide variety of alerting scenarios:

For Developers

• CI/CD Pipeline Alerts: Get notified when builds fail, tests break, or deployments complete. See our GitHub Actions integration guide.
• Error Monitoring: Receive instant alerts for application errors, exceptions, or API failures
• Performance Monitoring: Track response times, error rates, and system health metrics
• Deployment Notifications: Know when staging or production deployments succeed or fail

For DevOps and SRE

• Infrastructure Monitoring: Alert on CPU, memory, disk, or network issues using Grafana or Prometheus
• Service Uptime: Monitor website and API availability with Uptime Kuma or UptimeRobot
• Container & Kubernetes: Get notified of pod failures, resource constraints, or scaling events
• Security Alerts: Immediate notifications for authentication failures, intrusion attempts, or security policy violations

For Businesses

• E-commerce Operations: Alerts for new orders, payment failures, inventory levels, or fulfillment issues
• Customer Support: Notify team members of urgent support tickets or escalations
• Marketing Automation: Trigger notifications based on campaign events, form submissions, or user actions
• Financial Transactions: Real-time alerts for high-value transactions, refunds, or suspicious activity

For Home Automation

• Smart Home Notifications: Integrate with Home Assistant for security, environmental, or automation alerts
• IoT Device Monitoring: Get notified when sensors detect events or devices go offline
• Security Systems: Instant alerts for motion detection, door sensors, or camera events

For Traders and Investors

• Market Alerts: Price notifications, technical indicator signals, or volatility alerts from TradingView
• Portfolio Monitoring: Track portfolio value changes or position updates
• News and Events: Get notified of market-moving news or economic events

Explore our complete integration guides to see how to connect Echobell with your tools.

Why Choose Echobell?

Simplicity

Unlike complex notification platforms requiring extensive configuration, Echobell works out of the box. Create a channel, get a webhook URL, and you're receiving notifications in minutes.

Flexibility

Whether you need simple "something happened" alerts or rich, template-driven notifications with conditional logic, Echobell adapts to your needs without forcing you into a specific workflow.

Privacy

Your notification data belongs to you. By storing notification history locally on your device rather than on our servers, we give you complete control over your alert records.

Reliability

Built on modern cloud infrastructure with global reach, Echobell delivers notifications fast and reliably. Most alerts arrive within 1-2 seconds of the trigger event.

No Vendor Lock-in

Echobell uses standard protocols (HTTP webhooks and SMTP email). You can easily switch to another service or self-hosted solution without rewriting your integrations.

Next Steps

Ready to get started with Echobell?

• Complete Setup Guide - Step-by-step instructions for creating your first channel
• Webhook Integration - Learn how to trigger notifications via HTTP
• Template Guide - Master template syntax for rich notifications
• Popular Integrations - Connect with tools you already use
• Support - Get help and answers to common questions

Or jump directly into an integration guide:

• Monitor with Grafana - Infrastructure monitoring alerts
• GitHub Actions Notifications - CI/CD pipeline alerts
• TradingView Alerts - Trading and market notifications
• Home Assistant Integration - Smart home alerts