Setting Up Your First Alert in 3 Minutes

Most /learn content about alerts focuses on strategy: what thresholds to set, how to reduce noise, when to escalate. All useful, but it assumes you already have alerts configured. This page does not assume that. It walks through the actual setup, from no alerts to working notifications, so you can get to that strategic layer with something real already running.

If you have already added a store (if not, the getting started guide takes five minutes), you are ready to set up your first alert.

Step 1: Create an Alert Destination

Before you create any rules, you need somewhere for notifications to go. Bonesaw calls these "destinations." A destination is a delivery channel: an email address, a Slack webhook, or a Discord webhook.

Go to the Alerts page and add a destination. Pick whichever channel you actually check. This sounds obvious, but it matters more than you think. An alert delivered to an email you scan twice a day is not the same as one delivered to a Slack channel with push notifications. If speed matters for your use case, pick the fastest channel you have.

You can add multiple destinations later. For now, one is enough. The goal right now is to get a working notification pipeline, not a perfect one.

Step 2: Send a Test

After adding a destination, send a test notification. This confirms the delivery channel actually works before you rely on it. A misconfigured Slack webhook or a typo in an email address is easy to catch now and frustrating to discover later when you are wondering why you never got notified about a price drop.

The test button is right on the destination card. Hit it, confirm the notification arrives, and move on.

Step 3: Create Your First Rule

Now you need a rule that tells Bonesaw what to notify you about. Rules define which events on which stores trigger alerts.

Here is a sensible starting configuration:

Start with price drops. If you are monitoring competitors, price drops are the most immediately actionable change. A competitor lowers a price, and you may want to respond. Create a rule for price decreases on your most important watched store.

Set a reasonable threshold. A five percent default works for most products. This filters out tiny adjustments (a fifty-cent change on a hundred-dollar item) while catching meaningful moves. You can tune this later. The alert thresholds guide goes deep on threshold strategy once you have data flowing.

Pick a store. Your first rule should target the competitor you care about most. You can add rules for other stores later, but starting with one keeps things focused and gives you a concrete signal to evaluate.

Step 4: Consider the Daily Digest

Individual alerts fire in near-real-time when a change is detected. That is great for time-sensitive situations, but it can also mean a lot of notifications on an active day. Bonesaw offers a daily digest as an alternative or complement.

The digest is a single summary delivered on a schedule. It rolls up all changes, price movements, new products, and anomalies across your watched stores into one message. For operators who do not need to respond to changes within the hour, the digest is often the better starting point. You get a complete picture without the interruption cost of individual pings throughout the day.

You can use both. Set up individual alerts for the most critical events (a key competitor drops prices) and use the digest for general awareness of everything else. Many operators settle into this pattern after a few weeks.

What to Alert on First

If you are unsure which alert rules to create, here is a practical starting order:

Price drops on your top competitor. This is the highest-signal, lowest-noise starting point. You will learn quickly whether the threshold is right and whether the competitor actually changes prices often enough for this to matter.

New products on your top competitor. Product launches are inherently noteworthy and relatively infrequent, so this alert type tends to be low-noise by default. When a competitor adds something to their catalog, you want to know.

Availability changes on products you sell. If you sell similar products to a competitor, knowing when their versions go out of stock is useful. It means their customers may start looking elsewhere, and you want to be ready.

Skip the rest for now. You do not need to configure every possible alert type on day one. Start with the three above, run them for a week, and see what the signal looks like. Then add more rules based on what you actually need, not what seems theoretically useful.

Common Mistakes

Too many alerts on day one. The instinct is to turn everything on and filter later. This leads to notification fatigue before you develop any signal-reading habits. Start narrow and expand.

Wrong destination. An alert is only useful if you see it. If you set up email alerts but live in Slack, you are adding latency to every notification. Match the destination to where you actually spend your attention.

No test send. Skipping the test and discovering a broken webhook two weeks later means you missed two weeks of alerts. Always test before you trust.

Percentage thresholds that are too tight. A one percent threshold on a ten-dollar product fires on a ten-cent change. That is noise, not signal. Keep thresholds proportional to the price range of what you are monitoring.

Forgetting about the digest. Some operators set up ten individual alert rules and end up with a flood of notifications, when a single daily digest would have given them the same information in a more digestible format. Consider whether you need real-time or daily awareness for each type of change.

Alerts and Other Features

Alerts work best when combined with the rest of Bonesaw's monitoring stack.

Watchlists help you organize which products you care about most. If you have products in a watchlist, changes to those products appear in your digest alongside your alert rules. See the product watchlist guide for how to set up effective watchlists.

Anomaly detection catches patterns that your alert rules might miss. A sudden price spike on a product you are not tracking, a burst of catalog removals, or a technology change on a competitor's store. Anomalies surface in your digest and weekly report automatically, no rules required. The anomaly detection guide covers what it watches for and when to pay attention.

Weekly reports provide a structured summary even if you do not check in during the week. Between individual alerts, the daily digest, and the weekly report, you have three layers of awareness. Most operators find their rhythm with one or two of these, and the third serves as a safety net.

Frequently Asked Questions

How fast do alerts arrive after a price change?

Bonesaw sends alerts as soon as a change is detected during a scan cycle. The total delay depends on scan frequency, which varies by plan. On most plans, you will know within a few hours. PRO plans with hourly scanning can detect and alert within the hour.

Can I have different rules for different stores?

Yes. Each rule targets a specific store, so you can set a five percent price drop threshold on one competitor and a ten percent threshold on another. This lets you tune sensitivity per store rather than using a single global setting.

What happens if my destination goes down temporarily?

Bonesaw retries failed deliveries with increasing intervals. If your Slack webhook is temporarily unreachable, the notification will be retried rather than silently dropped. You will not miss an alert because of a momentary network issue.

Should I use alerts or the digest?

Both serve different purposes. Alerts give you near-real-time notification of specific events you have defined rules for. The digest gives you a daily summary of everything. Many operators use alerts for their most critical competitor and the digest for general awareness. Start with whichever matches your workflow and add the other if you find a gap.

How do I avoid alert fatigue?

Start with fewer rules, set reasonable thresholds, and use the digest for broad monitoring. If you are already getting too many notifications, the alert thresholds and cooldowns guide walks through systematic noise reduction.

---

Bonesaw is a product of MoonsLink. Monitoring capabilities described in this guide reflect publicly accessible product data collected through standard web protocols. Bonesaw does not access private or authenticated data. All data collection respects robots.txt directives and site access policies.