A practical guide for agencies managing uptime, SSL and DNS across every client site.
In this article
- What does monitoring from one dashboard mean for an agency?
- Why hosting and registrar dashboards don’t scale
- How should an agency structure clients, groups and monitors?
- How do you route alerts to the right person for each client?
- Original Sentinel evidence
- FAQ
Monitoring multiple client websites from one dashboard means running uptime, SSL, DNS and domain checks for every client through a single account, rather than logging into separate hosting panels or registrar portals. Sentinel groups monitors by client, so an agency can see the status of every site, receive centralised alerts, and hand off ownership without losing visibility.
Key takeaways
- Centralising monitoring removes reliance on fragmented hosting and registrar emails that different clients receive in different inboxes.
- Sentinel groups monitors by client, so status, alerts and history stay organised as the client list grows.
- Team-based access lets an agency assign specific staff to specific client groups instead of sharing one login between everyone.
- The Agency plan supports up to 250 monitors and 25 logins, enough for most agencies to cover every client site with room to grow.
What does it mean to monitor client websites from one dashboard?
It means an agency checks uptime, SSL certificate health, DNS configuration and domain status for every client from a single account, instead of piecing together separate hosting control panels, registrar dashboards and ad-hoc client emails. Sentinel performs ongoing HTTP checks to confirm services are up, responding correctly and performing within expected thresholds, alongside SSL, DNS and domain monitoring, all visible in one place.
For an agency running ten, thirty or a hundred client sites, this matters because the failure mode isn’t usually “we don’t have a tool” – it’s “the tool that caught the problem sent the alert to an account nobody checks.”
Why don’t hosting and registrar dashboards scale for agencies?
Hosting panels and registrars are built around a single account holder, not an agency managing dozens of separate client relationships. Each client site typically sits on different hosting, under a different registrar, with renewal and status emails going to whichever inbox was used at setup – sometimes the client’s, sometimes a former employee’s, sometimes nobody’s.
The result is that agencies find out about outages, certificate failures or domain problems from the client, after the damage is done, rather than from the infrastructure itself.
How should an agency structure clients, groups and monitors?
Group monitors by client first, then by site or environment (production, staging) within that client. Each client group should carry its own alert contact and escalation path, so a problem on one client’s site never gets routed to the wrong account manager.
A simple structure that works for most agencies:
| Level | Example | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Client group | Example Ltd | Contains every monitor for that client |
| Monitor | example.com uptime, SSL, DNS, domain | Individual checks within the group |
| Alert contact | Named account manager | First point of contact for that client |
| Escalation | Dev lead, after X minutes unresolved | Backstop if the first contact doesn’t act |
How do you route alerts to the right person for each client?
Sentinel’s alert channels are plan-gated: email and Discord on every plan, Slack and Microsoft Teams added on the Team plan, and SMS and phone call escalation added on the Agency plan, with contacts configured per monitor. On the Agency plan, that means the account manager for one client can receive Slack alerts while another client’s monitors escalate to a phone call for the on-call developer – without every alert going to a shared, easily-missed inbox.
For agencies, the practical rule is: every client group needs a named first contact and a named escalation contact, not a team distribution list that nobody owns.
Original Sentinel evidence
Frequently asked questions
How many client websites can one Sentinel account monitor?
The Agency plan supports up to 250 monitors and 25 logins for £65/month, which covers most agencies monitoring uptime, SSL, DNS and domain status across every client site from a single account.
What happens if a client site goes down outside office hours?
Alerts aren’t limited to email – Discord is available on every plan, Slack and Teams from Team, and SMS or phone call escalation from Agency, all configured per monitor, so out-of-hours cover doesn’t depend on someone watching an inbox.
Can different team members be responsible for different clients?
Yes. Sentinel supports team-based access control, so an agency can assign roles and delegate responsibility for specific client groups rather than sharing one login across the whole team.
Does moving to one dashboard replace the need for hosting or registrar alerts?
It replaces the need to rely on them as the primary signal. Hosting and registrar emails can still arrive, but centralised monitoring means the agency is alerted directly rather than depending on those messages reaching the right inbox.
Bring every client site into one view
Fragmented hosting logins and registrar emails are a liability for any agency responsible for client uptime. Sentinel centralises HTTP, SSL, DNS and domain monitoring for every client, with alerts routed to the right person automatically. This article is part of Sentinel’s guide to website monitoring for agencies.