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WelcoYour alerts, by text.

MSP alert SMS for data centers and managed service teams

Your NOC watches dozens of client networks, often across several provinces, and each one emails alerts its own way. Welco gives them all one address and texts the tech on call the client, the device and the problem. Rules follow each client's SLA hours, and adding a tech to nights adds no seat cost.

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  • One Welco address for every client
  • Rules by client and service hours
  • No per-user fees

Works by email with

  • PRTG
  • OpManager
  • LibreNMS
  • APC UPS

A network map watched by Network monitor: five hosts answer pings until Client 27 goes down (HTTP check failing) and the monitor raises the alert. The email reaches Welco and the phone shows: “Welco: [Client 27] Website DOWN, HTTP check failing at 4:18 AM. Reply STOP to opt out.”

Animation: alerts arrive through the night and each goes to the right person. 12:43 a.m., to On-call tech: "Welco: [Client 14] UPS on battery, 38 min runtime left at 12:43 AM. Reply STOP to opt out." 2:07 a.m., to Data center facilities tech: "Welco: [DC Hall 2] Room temp 33C at rack B4 sensor at 2:07 AM. Reply STOP to opt out." 4:18 a.m., to On-call engineer: "Welco: [Client 27] Website DOWN, HTTP check failing at 4:18 AM. Reply STOP to opt out."

What changes for an MSP night shift

Every client's alerts reach the tech on call as SMS texts, sorted by client and contract hours. They all arrive at one Welco address.

  • Each client reaches the right tech

    Per-client rules match the client name in the subject. The network tech gets Client 09, and the facilities tech gets the data hall.

  • Nights follow the SLA, not the tool

    24/7 clients text at any hour, while business-hours clients wait in email and the PSA queue. On-call routing handles the hours.

  • One dead core switch, a few texts

    Flood control caps the burst when every device behind the switch alarms. A monitor that resends the same email still makes one text per phone.

  • Only client probes you approved

    A stray client mail server can't text your techs, because only approved senders can trigger an alert.

A client's server room loses power on a Sunday night

One tech in Calgary carries the phone for thirty clients this weekend, from Alberta to Ontario. Only some of them pay for nights.

  1. Weekend rules are already live

    Clients on 24/7 contracts text the on-call tech. Business-hours clients stay in email until Monday morning.

  2. Client 31's UPS card sends an email

    UPS on battery power in response to an input power problem. Runtime remaining 34 min. ups-srvroom (Client 31)

  3. The tech sees the client and the runtime

    Welco: [Client 31] ups-srvroom ON BATTERY, 34 min runtime left at 1:12 AM. Reply STOP to opt out.

  4. The tech replies before calling the client

    Calling their facilities line, shutting down the test VMs first

  5. The reply reaches the NOC alerts mailbox

    A reply is emailed to the address that sent the alert. When that address is a mailbox your PSA reads, the day shift sees it in the morning queue.

    Reply from the on-call phone: Calling their facilities line, shutting down the test VMs first

  6. Day shift checks the SLA clock

    The delivery report shows when the text went out and that it reached the tech. That timing goes straight into the client's SLA review.

Times are an example, and how fast a text lands depends on the mobile networks. Welco doesn't open, update or close tickets in your PSA.

How to set up MSP alert texts for your first client

The NOC lead can do this alone. Each client's monitor changes by one email recipient.

  1. Sign up and verify your MSP

    Say which alerts you plan to send. We verify every business, using its Business Number in Canada, before its alert number goes live.

  2. Invite the techs who carry the phone

    Each tech joins from their own invite with their own cellphone, then replies YES once. A desk phone or landline can't receive texts.

  3. Approve each client's sender and test

    Add your Welco address to the client's monitor, approve that sender, then send a test alert. Test mode shows the text without using credits.

Send the next client outage to the tech on call

Verify your company and approve one client's monitoring sender.

7-day free trial, 15 message creditsCard required for verificationNo charge for 7 daysEmail reminder before billing

Text me my server alertsBook a demo

Which client monitoring tools can send MSP alert SMS?

Clients don't need matching tools, because Welco only reads each tool's alert email. Setup guides cover PRTG text alerts, OpManager SMS alerts and Datadog SMS alerts through an @-mention. LibreNMS SMS alerts cover open source monitoring.

Client and data hall alerts a tech acts on

Masked examples. SolarWinds text alerts, Zabbix problem alerts and APC UPS text alerts arrive the same way. So do failed backup jobs, website down text alerts and urgent ticket texts.

  • Data hall: Welco: [DC Hall 1] Water sensor WET under CRAC-2 at 3:22 AM. Reply STOP to opt out.
  • Client backup: Welco: [Client 22] Nightly backup job FAILED, 2 of 9 VMs at 2:05 AM. Reply STOP to opt out.
  • PSA ticket: Welco: [PSA] Priority 1 ticket from Client 05, mail server down at 10:48 PM. Reply STOP to opt out.

A phone showing these alert texts: Data hall, "Welco: [DC Hall 1] Water sensor WET under CRAC-2 at 3:22 AM. Reply STOP to opt out."; Client backup, "Welco: [Client 22] Nightly backup job FAILED, 2 of 9 VMs at 2:05 AM. Reply STOP to opt out."; PSA ticket, "Welco: [PSA] Priority 1 ticket from Client 05, mail server down at 10:48 PM. Reply STOP to opt out."

Which client alerts should text the on-call tech?

Text the outages and failures that break a client's SLA before morning. Warnings, recoveries and alerts from business-hours clients can go to email and the PSA queue.

Text these for 24/7 clients

  • A core switch, firewall or WAN link down.
  • A server or VM host that stops responding.
  • A UPS on battery in a client server room.
  • Data hall temperature or water sensor alarms.
  • A failed backup of a production server.
  • Priority 1 tickets raised after hours.

Send these to the morning queue

Disk and CPU warnings, recoveries, patch reports and backups that finished with warnings. Business-hours clients' alerts after closing belong here too.

Give every client one short code

Agree on one code per client, like Client 09, and put it in every monitor's alert subject. One code means one rule per client, however many tools they run. Then read how to stop one failure flooding the phone.

A client switch alert, trimmed to one text

Monitoring emails often bury the client and device in the middle. Welco puts both at the front, so the tech knows whose network it is from the lock screen.

Alert email from opmanager@noc.example.net, subject “Device not responding: core-sw-01”. Welco trims it to one text of 91 characters: “Welco: [Client 09] core-sw-01 not responding, Critical at 1:26 AM. Reply STOP to opt out.”

Text received: Welco: [Client 09] core-sw-01 not responding, Critical at 1:26 AM. Reply STOP to opt out.

Characters199911 credit

Animation: the alert email "Device not responding: core-sw-01" is trimmed into one text: "Welco: [Client 09] core-sw-01 not responding, Critical at 1:26 AM. Reply STOP to opt out."

Use a severity rule to text only Critical alerts and leave warnings in your ticket queue.

Client nights at an MSP, before and after Welco

Small ISPs and credit union IT teams sort their nights the same way, like most teams in alarm notification by industry.

Without Welco

  • Every client's monitor emails a shared NOC inbox nobody reads after 10 p.m.
  • A per-seat paging tool billed for techs who cover nights twice a month.
  • One core switch failure buzzes the phone for every device behind it.
  • A business-hours client's warning wakes the same tech as a 24/7 outage.

With Welco

  • The client, the device and the problem on the first line of the text.
  • Techs come and go from the night list with no per-user fees.
  • A capped burst, then the tech opens the console.
  • Rules that match each contract's service hours.

Frequently asked questions

Do my clients need their own Welco accounts or an agent on their servers?

No. Each client's monitor sends to your one Welco address, and you approve each sender on your account. Nothing is installed on client servers or probes. The alert emails they send today keep going to every address they reach now.

Can 24/7 clients and business-hours clients get different treatment?

Yes. One rule texts the on-call tech at any hour for clients whose SLA covers nights. A second rule texts business-hours clients only during the working day. Their night alerts still land in email and your PSA for the morning.

What do techs see on their phone, and do they need an app?

A normal text that starts with Welco: and names the client, the device and the problem. There is no app to install or keep signed in. Each tech confirms their own cellphone with YES once and can reply STOP to leave.

A client's core switch failed and every device behind it alarmed. What reaches the phone?

A few texts instead of hundreds, because flood control limits how many a burst can send. If the monitor resends the same email, each phone still gets it once. Alerts past the limit are not texted, so the tech should open the console after the first text.

Can a tech reply, and how would we know a text didn't arrive?

A reply comes back by email to the address that sent the alert, so send from a mailbox your team reads. Each text has a delivery report. If a tech listed a desk phone or landline, the report says so in plain words.

Is Welco a replacement for PagerDuty or Opsgenie, and what does it cost?

It can be for teams that only used those tools for texts. Welco has no schedules or escalation, so keep your on-call tool if you rely on them, and read the Opsgenie end of life guide. With no per-seat, hardware or setup fee, you pay for message credits on a plan from pricing, after a 7-day trial with 15 credits. Plans are priced in US dollars.

One address for every client, one text for the tech on call

Approve your monitoring senders and add your techs' phones.

Text me my server alertsBook a demo

7-day free trial, 15 message creditsCard required for verificationNo charge for 7 daysEmail reminder before billing