Notification channels

AlertKick separates what happened (alerts) from how you hear about it (channels). Channels appear in three places: the immediate notification recipients on a policy, the escalation levels that fire when nobody acknowledges, and each user’s personal notification preferences. The same channels are available everywhere, so nothing forces a “Slack for some things, email for others” split unless you want one.

The channel lineup

Channel	Best for	Notes
Email	Low-urgency, paper trail	Any address - recipients don’t need an account
Slack	Team-visible first knock	Workspace channels via the AlertKick app, or a webhook URL
Telegram	Personal push that beats email	Via the AlertKick bot
WhatsApp	Personal push where Telegram isn’t used
SMS	Waking people up	Works on any phone, no app or data needed
Notify Person	”Reach Alex, however Alex prefers”	Follows the person’s own preferences
Custom Webhook	Everything else	JSON POST to any URL - bridges, tickets, lights

Where channels plug in

Policy notifications. The first block of every escalation policy sends to a recipient list the moment an alert triggers, acknowledges, or resolves. Recipient types cover the whole lineup:

The Slack option lists your workspace’s channels directly (with a note on whether the bot is a member), so wiring #infra-alerts is a two-click pick, not a webhook scavenger hunt. See the Slack integration for connecting the workspace.

Escalation levels. Every channel is also a level type, which is what makes the classic severity ladder possible - visible channel first, personal pings next, disruptive channels last:

Personal preferences. Each user configures how they want to be reached. The Notify Person channel honours those preferences, so a policy can say “tell the on-call” without hardcoding anyone’s phone number into shared config - people update their own details, policies never change.

Picking channels by urgency

A shape that works for most teams:

1. Every alert - Slack channel, so the whole team has ambient awareness and a searchable record.
2. Unacknowledged after 5 minutes - Notify Person or a roster, following personal preferences.
3. Still unacknowledged - SMS, then repeat. Texts and calls are for escalation, not first contact; a pager that opens with the most disruptive channel trains people to dread and then mute it.

Webhooks sit outside the urgency ladder - use them to mirror alerts into ticketing, status pages, or anything with an HTTP endpoint, in parallel with the human channels.

Next steps

• Build the ladder in escalation policies.
• Point the person-shaped levels at a roster so the rotation, not the config, decides who gets woken.