TraceAlerts and email reports
Get an email the moment a page is viewed or an event fires, plus a weekly summary and traffic spike warnings.
Trace can email you in three ways:
| What triggers it | Where to set it up | |
|---|---|---|
| Alert | A specific page is viewed or a specific event fires — every time it happens. | Settings → Alerts |
| Weekly summary | A recap of the site's last 7 days, once a week. | Settings → Reports |
| Traffic spike alert | Traffic jumps unexpectedly compared with the previous hour. | Settings → Reports |
All three are sent to the workspace owner's email address. Bot traffic never triggers them.
Alerts
An alert sends an email the moment a visitor views a specific page or triggers a specific event. It's separate from goals, which track a running conversion rate.
Trigger
- URL matches — fires when a visitor views a page with exactly this path, for example
/checkout/success. The query string is ignored; wildcards aren't supported. - Custom event — fires when a visitor triggers an event with exactly this name, for example
purchase(see Custom events). This also covers the events Trace records automatically —external_link,file_download,form_submission,paymentandidentify— so you can get an email when someone downloads a file or completes a payment without writing any code.
Write the subject and body yourself. These tokens are replaced with values from the visitor who triggered the alert:
| Token | Replaced with |
|---|---|
{{goal.name}} | The alert's own name. |
{{visitor.name}} | The visitor's anonymous display name. |
{{visitor.country}} | Their country. |
{{visitor.device}} | Their device type. |
{{visitor.browser}} | Their browser. |
{{visitor.referrer}} | The domain they arrived from. |
{{visitor.channel}} | Their channel, for example "Organic Search", "Paid Social" or "Direct". |
For example:
Subject: New purchase from {{visitor.country}}
Body: {{visitor.name}} just completed a purchase on {{visitor.device}} ({{visitor.browser}}), arriving via {{visitor.channel}}.Create an alert
- Go to Settings → Alerts.
- Enter an Alert name, pick the trigger type and enter the page path or event name.
- Write a Subject and Body using the tokens above.
- Click Create alert.
A site can have up to 10 alerts; the tab shows your current usage (for example "3/10"). Click Delete next to an alert to stop it immediately.
Alerts fire on every match
An alert sends one email every time its condition matches — a page viewed 10 times sends 10 emails. Point alerts at rare, high-value actions (a purchase, a sign-up) rather than routine pageviews.
I created an alert but never got an email
Check that the trigger is typed exactly as it appears in your data: paths are case-sensitive and need the leading /, and event names must match exactly. Then trigger it yourself and watch the event log to confirm the event arrived. Remember that alerts go to the workspace owner, not to every member.
Email reports
Settings → Reports has two switches. Both are on by default; click Save after changing them.
Weekly summary
A weekly recap of the site's traffic: visitors (with the change against the previous week), sessions, pageviews, bounce rate and the top three channels for the last 7 days, using the site's timezone. No email is sent for a week with no visitors.
Traffic spike alerts
Trace checks traffic every hour. If the last hour had at least 10 visitors and at least three times as many as the hour before, you get an email.
If Auto-enable on spike is switched on in Settings → Security, a spike also turns on attack mode, and the email says so.