Getting started

WatchTower15 gives engineering teams server, domain and security monitoring in a single platform — with a least-privilege server agent that never runs as root, external checks that run on a schedule, log search built in, and alerting that turns findings into action. This guide takes you from nothing to a monitored server, a monitored domain, and your first alarm.

Note

New to the platform? Read Core concepts & architecture first for the mental model (resources, agents, checks, alarms) — it makes everything below click.

Create your account

Click Get started on watchtower15.com, or Create an account on the sign-in page.

1. Enter your work email. We email you a link to confirm the address. It expires after 24 hours, and only the most recent link works: if it doesn’t arrive, check your spam folder, then use Resend (available after a minute). Disposable email addresses can’t be used.
2. Set up your account. The link opens a page where you enter your full name and choose a password. Once you’ve opened it, you have 24 hours to finish.
3. Set up your organisation. Enter its name, industry, company size and country, accept the Terms of Service and the Data Processing Agreement on behalf of your organisation, and click Create organisation.

Nothing is created until you click Create organisation. Then your organisation is ready, you’re signed in as its Admin, and we email you to confirm it.

Your organisation’s billing email is set to the address you registered with, and its billing country to the country you chose. Both can be changed under Organisation → Billing → Billing Details, where you pick the country from a list you can search. Your organisation is billed in US dollars, whatever its country: see Your billing currency.

Next, add a payment method. Until your organisation has one, new servers wait in Pending and nothing new can be added for monitoring — see without a payment method. The Add a payment method button on the last step takes you there; it is also under Organisation → Billing → Payment Details.

Your organisation starts with the default account limits.

Already have an account?

For privacy, the registration page shows the same message whether or not an address already has an account; the email tells you which. If yours does, the email offers Sign in, Reset your password and Create another organisation. The last one skips the account step and adds the new organisation to your existing account, with you as its Admin. Then sign in as usual: it’s in the organisation switcher.

If your company signs in with single sign-on, you can’t register separately: ask your administrator for an invitation. See Single sign-on.

Your billing currency

Every new organisation is billed in US dollars (USD). Until your organisation’s first invoice, you can switch to pounds sterling (GBP), or back, in the Currency field under Organisation → Billing → Billing Details. These are the only two currencies offered, and invoices are issued in the one you choose.

Once your organisation has had an invoice, of any kind, the currency is fixed. Billing Details then shows it read-only, with The billing currency can only be changed before the first invoice. Changing it needs the billing.edit permission, and the change is recorded on the Audit page.

Prerequisites

• A WatchTower15 account and an organisation — see Create your account.
• A payment method on your organisation, or a courtesy account.
• An organisation token — find it in the dashboard under your organisation’s install instructions. It authorises new agents to enroll into your org.
• For the server agent: a Linux host (x86-64 or arm64) running systemd, with outbound HTTPS to the WatchTower15 API, api.watchtower15.com. No inbound ports are required. Behind a firewall that allows traffic by IP address, allow 3.11.48.155, 18.171.1.44 and 18.135.154.177 on port 443, and use api.watchtower15.com wherever the dashboard shows app.watchtower15.com: see the Restricted egress tab under Install.

1. Install the server agent

Run the one-line installer on any server you want to monitor. It downloads the agent, installs it as an unprivileged service user, enrolls the host into your organisation, and starts reporting. The install step needs root, so run it with sudo:

curl -fsSL https://api.watchtower15.com/api/agent/install-script | sudo sh -s -- <org_token>

==> Downloading binary from https://api.watchtower15.com/api/agent/binary?arch=amd64 ...
==> SHA256 verified: 3f1c…
==> Binary replaced: /var/lib/wt15-server-agent/wt15-server-agent
==> Status    : systemctl status wt15-server-agent

Within a few seconds the host appears in your dashboard with CPU, memory, disk and network telemetry. See Installation for unattended installs, the installer’s options, and hosts behind a forward proxy or an IP allow-list.

Least privilege by design

The agent runs as a dedicated wt15-server-agent service user, never as root, with NoNewPrivileges=yes and ProtectSystem=strict, and it can hold only two read capabilities (CAP_SYS_PTRACE and CAP_DAC_READ_SEARCH, used for per-process metrics and reading log files). A service parameter read from a file is read without them, so only a file the agent’s user may read is read. It cannot escalate or change the host. See the privilege model.

2. Add a domain to monitor

Server agents cover what runs on your hosts. Domains are watched from the outside by WatchTower15’s scanner fleet — no agent required. (Services are checked by your own servers instead: see Services.) Add a domain in the dashboard and the platform immediately begins:

• resolving its DNS records every 5 minutes,
• probing reachability over HTTP/HTTPS (www and apex),
• checking its SSL/TLS certificate and registration expiry daily.

See Uptime, domain & service checks for the full check catalogue and intervals.

3. Get alerted when something breaks

Monitoring is only useful if it reaches a human. WatchTower15 ships a catalogue of alarm rules (certificate expiring, domain unreachable, DNS changed, slow response, …) that evaluate automatically after every scan. Attach a notification channel — email, Slack, Microsoft Teams, or a generic webhook — so incidents are delivered where your team already works.

See Alarms & alerting to configure thresholds, consecutive-failure counts, and escalation from warning to critical.

Core concepts at a glance

WatchTower15 has a small, consistent vocabulary. Everything else builds on it:

Term	Meaning
Resource	Anything monitored and metered — a server, a domain, or a service.
Agent	The wt15-server-agent process reporting telemetry from a host.
Check / scan	An evaluation of a resource — agent telemetry or an external probe.
Tag	A key/value label (in a tag group) used to organise and target resources.
Alarm	A rule over checks that opens an incident and notifies when breached.
Incident	An open problem for a resource, with a severity of warning or critical.

Where to next

• Core concepts & architecture — how the pieces fit together.
• Server agent overview — the agent in depth.
• Tagging — auto-tagging and advanced tag rules for a large fleet.
• Logs — ship, search and explore your server logs.
• Security scanning — certificate, DNS and domain posture.