Install & sign up
Create a workspace, verify your email, and configure basic workspace settings.
Sign up
Navigate to /register. You can sign up with:
- Email + password: enter your email, choose a password, and verify via the confirmation email.
- Google OAuth (when enabled by the platform operator): if the Continue with Google button is visible, click it and authorise the connection. When it is not visible, use email and password.
Signing up creates a new workspace automatically. You can also be invited to an existing workspace by a workspace owner; in that case accept the invitation email instead.
Your new workspace also comes with a working on-call setup: a weekly schedule with you as its only member and a default escalation policy that pages it, so alerts already have somewhere to go. See On-call & schedules for how it works and how to build it out.
Workspace name vs. status page URLs
During sign-up you choose a workspace name (for example Acme Ops). It is a free-text display label shown in the dashboard header, emails, and invitations. The name must be unique across the whole platform, so sign-up fails if it is already taken; try a more specific variant. You can rename it any time under Settings → Workspace with no side effects. The name is not slugified, does not appear in any URL, and is not referenced in the audit log (which records your workspace by an internal ID, not by name).
Public URLs come from a separate, per-status-page slug, generated only when you create a status page:
- The slug is derived from that status page's own name (lowercase, letters and digits only, everything else collapsed to a hyphen), with a short random suffix always appended. For example,
Acme Cloud Statusbecomes/status-page/acme-cloud-status-7c0f31. The suffix is added every time, not only when two names collide, so a page's URL can never be guessed from another page's URL. - It is assigned once, at creation, and never changes afterward. Renaming the status page later updates its display name only, not its URL.
- It is globally unique across every workspace on HowlOps (the public route is not scoped per tenant), and it is what the public REST API uses to address the page (
GET /api/v1/public/status-pages/<slug>).
See First status page to create one.
Email verification
After sign-up, a verification email is sent to your address. Click the link inside. The link expires after 24 hours.
You must verify your email before you can sign in. Until you do, the login screen will ask you to verify and offer to resend the link. This confirms we can reach you before an incident does.
If you do not receive it:
- Check your spam or promotions folder.
- On the login screen, enter your email and password. If the account is unverified, you will see a Resend verification email button.
- Or, if you are already signed in on another device, go to Settings → Profile and click Resend verification email.
The welcome email
Once your address is verified we send one welcome message. It carries the address of your workspace, the plan you are on and when a trial ends, a shortcut into the setup guide, and a short tour of the three screens most people use first: the monitor list, an incident as it looks when you open it, and a public status page.
You will receive it once. If you joined an existing workspace through an invitation, or your address was already proven when the account was created, it arrives at that moment instead.
It is the only message of its kind we send. To stop it and everything else in that category, use the unsubscribe link in its footer, or change what reaches you under Settings → Notifications.
First login
After verification you are taken to the onboarding wizard which guides you through:
- Adding your first monitor.
- Connecting a notification channel.
- (Optional) Inviting teammates.
You can skip the wizard at any time; all steps are available from the sidebar.
Invite teammates
Workspace owners and admins can invite additional members:
- Go to Settings → Team.
- Click Invite member and enter their email address.
- Choose Admin, Member, or an available custom role. Ownership is transferred only after the person is an existing member.
- Click Send invitation.
The invitee receives an email with an accept link. Accepted invitations are visible in the Team list immediately.
| Role | Capabilities |
|---|---|
| Owner | Full access, billing, workspace deletion |
| Admin | Full administration, including billing; cannot transfer ownership or delete the workspace |
| Member | Operate technical resources; billing, workspace settings, and team management are read-only |
Who can do what
The table above covers the three built-in system roles. For finer-grained access, such as a read-only auditor or incident-only responder, define a custom role under Settings → Roles instead of stretching Member's permissions. The full permission matrix, including how to assign a role in an invitation, is in the roles and permissions reference.
Security settings
After sign-up, consider enabling these under Settings → Security:
- Two-factor authentication (2FA): TOTP-based (Google Authenticator, 1Password, etc.)
- Session management: view active sessions and revoke them remotely
- SSO: connect your identity provider when the workspace's current capabilities include SSO; see Configure SAML SSO and the current pricing page
What's next
- First monitor: add an HTTP or ping check
- First heartbeat: monitor your cron jobs and background workers
- First status page: publish a public uptime page
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