Every 5 minutes
Monitor websites from a sheet with email alerts
You get an email when a site in your sheet goes down, and every outage is logged in the same sheet.
- Runs
- Every 5 minutes
- Apps
- Gmail, Google Sheets
- AI
- Not needed
- Access
- Sheets read+write; Gmail gmail.send
Send this to your assistant
Create a ClickRuntime automation: every 5 minutes, check each URL in my Sites sheet. If one is down, email me and add a row to the Outages tab.
First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.
Why use it
Why teams use this automation
A one-person agency hosts sites for local businesses: a dentist, two restaurants, a plumber. When a site goes down, the first sign is often a client email the next morning. There is no record of how long it was down or how often it happens.
Checking each site every few minutes and emailing on failure means you hear first, and the log tab gives you the history to discuss with the host or the client.
What you get out of it
You find out before clients do
An email within minutes of an outage gives you time to fix the problem or warn the client before customers notice.
Evidence for hosting complaints
Each outage is recorded with its time, so you can show a host exactly when and how often sites failed.
Add a site by adding a row
Monitoring a new client means typing their address into the sheet. There is no separate tool to configure.
Alerts to the inbox you already check
Email works on any phone without another app, which suits people who are not in a team chat all day.
How it works
What happens, step by step
Every 5 minutes ClickRuntime reads the list of websites from your Sites sheet in Google Sheets.
It visits each site and checks whether it responds.
When a site goes down or comes back, you get an email saying which site and when.
Each change is added as a row in the Outages tab, so you keep a full history.
Before it runs live
- Connect Google through your own Google app (a one-time, 10-minute setup), so it works with your own Gmail
- Connect your Google Sheets account and pick the spreadsheets it may use
What you get
Build your own
Need it to work differently?
Your own rules
Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.
Any number of apps
One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.
AI where it helps
Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.
On a schedule or on each event
Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.
Changes you can ask for
- Run it at a different time, more or less often, or only on weekdays
- Add an AI step, for example to summarize, sort or draft a reply
- Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
- Combine it with other Gmail and Google Sheets steps into one automation
Under the hood
The code that runs this automation
from datetime import datetime, timezone
from google.oauth2.credentials import Credentials
from googleapiclient.discovery import build
from clickruntime import on_trigger, credentials, http, state, notify
SHEET_ID = "your-spreadsheet-id"
@on_trigger
def run(event):
sheets = build("sheets", "v4", credentials=Credentials(credentials.connection("google", "work")), cache_discovery=False)
urls = [r[0] for r in sheets.spreadsheets().values().get(spreadsheetId=SHEET_ID, range="Sites!A2:A").execute().get("values", []) if r]
status, rows = state.get("status") or {}, []
for url in urls:
try:
up = http.get(url, timeout=10).status_code < 500
except Exception:
up = False
if url in status and status[url] != up:
notify.email_me(f"{url} is {'back up' if up else 'DOWN'}", f"Checked at {datetime.now(timezone.utc):%H:%M} UTC.")
rows.append([datetime.now(timezone.utc).isoformat(timespec="minutes"), url, "up" if up else "down"])
status[url] = up
if rows:
sheets.spreadsheets().values().append(spreadsheetId=SHEET_ID, range="Outages!A:C",
valueInputOption="USER_ENTERED", body={"values": rows}).execute()
state.set("status", status)
return {"checked": len(urls), "changes": len(rows)}FAQ
Common questions
Will I get an email every 5 minutes during a long outage?
What counts as down?
Can it check pages behind a login?
What permissions does it need?
Does it need AI?
How many runs does it use?
Can I change how it works?
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