FailedFailed 2 times in a row
Backup job "DC-02 · vzdump all VMs" reported failed: [Failed] vzdump all VMs — repository unreachable
Backup monitoring for MSPs
Know which backups need attention.
BackupSentinel reads the report emails your backup software already sends and shows what failed, went missing or needs a look.
When a backup fails, AI explains the likely cause and the fixes to try first.Example of the BackupSentinel Overview with sample data: status counts for 32 backup jobs and the Needs attention list.
The list shows what needs someone, problems first.
- 14 days
- Free trial. No credit card.
- 10
- Backup products read out of the box, plus rules you write.
- 15 min
- Between checks for reports that did not arrive.
- Unlimited
- Clients, devices and team seats, on every plan.
A backup can fail by saying nothing.
Every job knows when its next report is due. If it does not arrive inside the job’s window, the job turns Missing and lands in Needs attention like a failure would. Silence is never read as success.
The window scales with the job: a quarter of the interval (15 minutes to 2 hours) for jobs every 8 hours or more often, a tenth of the interval and at least 2 hours for longer ones.
SRV-FS01 · Exchange backupDaily · report due 01:00Sample data
Grace: 2 h 24 min for a daily job A check every 15 minutes
How it works
From a report email to a technician’s list.
No agents, and no access to your backup servers. It reads the emails your backup tools already send.
- 01
Your backup software sends its report
Point its notification email at the client's address. Nothing to install on the server, no credentials to share.
- 02
A rule reads it
A built-in rule for the product, or one you wrote and tested, picks out the job name and whether it worked.
- 03
Every job gets a status and a deadline
Healthy, Warning, Failed, Missing, Waiting or Paused, and the time the next report is due. If it does not come, the job turns Missing.
- 04
Needs attention lists what needs a technician
In plain words, problems first. Acknowledge, snooze or resolve, and the alert goes to email, Slack, Teams or PagerDuty.
Every client, every job, in the order that matters.
Problems sort first everywhere: lists, tables, the client sidebar, tabs.
Jobs with a heartbeat
The last seven results sit on every row, so a flaky backup shows before it fails outright.
Backup Matrix
One row per backup, one cell per day, for the whole estate.
Why it failed, and what to try first
Each failed, missing or warning backup gets a likely cause and ranked fixes, worked out from the report email with names and addresses removed first. How AI explanations work
A page per client
SLA, backups, devices, contacts and alert history. Pause a client and monitoring resumes on the date you set.
An inbox for the odd ones
Reports that match no backup wait here. Start monitoring from the email, assign it, or write a rule and test it on the message.
TV mode for the office screen
The Overview as a wallboard: status counts and the Needs attention list, large enough to read across the room. It refreshes itself every 10 minutes and says so when its data is stale.
Reports your clients can read
- Monthly client reportSuccess rate, missing reports, incidents and time to recover, as CSV.
- Scheduled summariesHealth summaries to any address, daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly.
- Daily digestAt 07:00 in your timezone, what is still open.
Reads the software you run. Alerts where you work.
It does not connect to your backup servers. It reads the reports they already send.
- Veeam B&R
- Synology DSM
- Synology Active Backup for Business
- Synology Active Backup for Microsoft 365
- Acronis Cyber Protect
- Microsoft 365
- Proxmox PBS
- Duplicati
- NAKIVO
- Datto
- MSP360
- Cove Data Protection
- anything else that sends email, with a custom rule
Alert channels
- EmailAlerts and recovery notices to any address you enter.
- SlackAn incoming webhook: alerts post to the channel it belongs to.
- Microsoft TeamsA Workflows webhook that posts to the team channel.
- PagerDutyEvents API v2. An OK report resolves the incident it opened.
Failed deliveries are retried. SMS is not available.
No email? One request reports a run.
POST /api/v1/jobs/{jobId}/report Authorization: Bearer bsk_live_… Idempotency-Key: nightly-2026-10-06 {"status": "ok", "size_bytes": 48318382080}Supported software and the report API
Ask from Claude Code or another MCP client.
The same API key connects an MCP client to your workspace: ask what needs attention, look up a client or a backup, and with a Read and act key, acknowledge or resolve alerts.
claude mcp add --transport http backupsentinel \ https://app.backupsentinel.io/api/mcp \ --header "Authorization: Bearer bsk_live_…"The MCP server
Pricing
Pay for the backups you watch, not the clients you have.
Plans differ in two things: how many backup jobs they include and how long the evidence is kept.
2 months free with annual billing
Starter
For small IT teams and solo MSPs getting started with backup monitoring.
€29/month
or €24.17/month billed yearly
25configured backup jobs
- Report emails kept
- 30 days
- Alert history
- 30 days
- Report history
- 30 days
- AI explanations
- 10 a month
- Branded client reports
- —
- White-label client portal
- —
- REST API
- —
Growth
Recommended for MSPsFor MSPs managing multiple clients: more monitored jobs, a longer audit trail, branded PDF client reports and a read-only REST API.
€99/month
or €82.50/month billed yearly
100configured backup jobs
- Report emails kept
- 180 days
- Alert history
- 1 year
- Report history
- 1 year
- AI explanations
- No monthly count
- Branded client reports
- Included
- White-label client portal
- —
- REST API
- 60 req/min
Generate professional PDF backup-health reports with your company branding.
Pro
For large MSPs: the highest job allowance, the longest retention and a white-label client portal.
€249/month
or €207.50/month billed yearly
500configured backup jobs
- Report emails kept
- 2 years
- Alert history
- 5 years
- Report history
- 5 years
- AI explanations
- No monthly count
- Branded client reports
- Included
- White-label client portal
- Included
- REST API
- 300 req/min
- Includes branded reports
- Remove BackupSentinel branding
- Client portal access
- Custom branding
Clients, devices and team seats are unlimited on every plan. Prices exclude VAT. Compare plans and read the FAQ
Start with one client and one backup.
Point its report email at the address you get on sign-up. Within a day you will know whether it reported.