How it works

01 - Verification

Prove the domain is yours.

Before Barkme watches anything, you verify the domain with a single DNS TXT record. In your DNS provider, add a record on the apex with host @ and the value barkme-verify= followed by the token we show you. That's it - it usually takes about 2 minutes.

• One record per domain, added once. Verifying the apex covers every subdomain and every URL beneath it.
• You can only monitor domains you own or operate - verification is what enforces that.
• Propagation usually takes a couple of minutes. We re-check automatically until the record shows up.

03 - Incidents

Confirm first. Then bark.

A single blip will not wake you. When a check fails, it is retried two seconds later - and it takes two consecutive failed checks before an incident opens. Four failed requests in total. So a 30-second monitor alerts in about a minute, and a 5-minute monitor takes five to ten.

The incident is backdated to the first failed check, so the confirmation window still counts against your uptime. A monitor only ever has one open incident at a time - a long outage stays one incident, not a stream of alerts.

We are slow to open and quick to close: the incident resolves on the first successful check, and you get a recovery notice with the total downtime. Every incident is logged with its status code and duration.

Times read in your timezone. Set it once under Settings, then Team - a new account starts on UTC - and every incident, alert, email and status page is shown in the zone you picked, with the dashboard header always naming it. Instants are stored in UTC underneath, so nobody has to do the arithmetic at three in the morning.

One thing to check on your side: rate limiters and firewalls. Barkme checks from one IP on a fixed interval, which can look like a bot to fail2ban, a WAF or a DDoS shield - the firewall briefly bans the prober and you get a DOWN alert while real visitors are fine. Whitelist the Barkme prober IP (shown in your dashboard under Settings, then Team) and those false barks disappear; the alert itself names the probable cause when an error matches this pattern.

05 - Reputation

Up for you, blocked for them.

A domain can serve every request perfectly and still be broken for part of the internet: DNS security filters can start blocking it for visitors, or it can land on a spam blacklist that quietly sends your email to the void. The first symptom is usually a customer saying "your site doesn't work" or "I never got the confirmation email" - days after it happened.

Barkme checks every verified domain once a day on two independent tracks. Web reputation compares your domain's DNS answer across filtering resolvers against clean ones, plus Quad9's threat-intel feeds. Mail blacklist looks the domain up on Spamhaus DBL, SURBL, and URIBL - the lists that decide whether your email lands.

You get exactly two alerts per event: one when the domain lands on a list, naming the sources to contact, and one when it clears - so you know the exposure window instead of guessing it. Inconclusive lookups are never reported as listings, each track can be toggled per domain, and the alerts travel the same channels as expiry warnings.