Set up Pushover alerts
Pushover delivers alerts as a push notification to the Pushover app on your phone, tablet or desktop. Under the
hood a Pushover contact is an http contact with its gateway set to Pushover and its address holding
your user key (a key, not a URL).
Settings reference
Section titled “Settings reference”| Setting (UI label) | API field (v2) | Type / allowed values | Default | Plan limits | What it does for you |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Contact Type | type |
"http" |
- | - | Pushover is stored as a plain http contact |
| Gateway | gateway |
"Pushover" |
- (must be set explicitly) | - | Routes through the Pushover push API |
| User key | address |
Your Pushover user key (not a URL) | - (required) | - | Identifies which Pushover account/device group receives the push |
| Group events | groupedAlerts |
boolean | false |
- | Combine simultaneous alerts into one notification - see grouped alerts |
Set it up in the app
Section titled “Set it up in the app”- In the Pushover app or dashboard, find your user key.
- In HostTracker, open Contacts and click Add contact.
- Choose Pushover.
- Paste your user key and give the contact a name.
- Save.
What the message looks like
Section titled “What the message looks like”A push notification with the monitor’s name and what happened, delivered to every device linked to the key.
Do it with the API or MCP
Section titled “Do it with the API or MCP”POST /contact{ "type": "http", "gateway": "Pushover", "address": "<user key>", "name": "My Pushover" }MCP: use api_request with the body above - create_contact doesn’t cover http/gateway contacts.
What happens next
Section titled “What happens next”An http contact is born confirmed - there’s no code to verify. Because Pushover’s address is a key rather
than a URL, a test routes through the same push sender a real alert uses, not the
raw webhook diagnostic.
Limits and gotchas
Section titled “Limits and gotchas”- The contact is addressed by your user key, not an email or device name - copy it exactly from Pushover.
- Unlike PagerDuty/Opsgenie, Pushover is an ordinary groupable channel - turn on Group events if you watch many monitors from one key and want simultaneous alerts combined.
- Test the contact to confirm the notification reaches your device before relying on it.
- Being a recognized gateway also means Pushover can receive certificate-expiry, domain-expiry, DNSBL blacklist and Web Risk notices - a plain unrecognized webhook contact cannot (see Webhook).