Send Zabbix problem alerts as a phone call

Last updated September 2026

Zabbix severity levels map neatly onto "does this justify a call". Disaster and High almost always do; Warning and Information almost never do. Email2Phone lets you split them without changing how Zabbix notifies anyone else.

Setting it up

1. Check the Email media type is configured. Go to Alerts → Media types → Email (in older versions, Administration → Media types). Confirm your SMTP server details are set and the media type is enabled.
2. Add the Email2Phone address to a user. Open Users → Users, pick the on-call user, and on the Media tab add an Email entry with your Email2Phone address.
3. Restrict it to the severities worth a call. On that same media entry, tick only Disaster and High under "Use if severity". This is the most important step — it is what stops every Warning from ringing a phone.
4. Set the time period if you only want out-of-hours calls. The "When active" field takes a Zabbix time period, for example 1-7,00:00-24:00 for always, or 1-5,18:00-24:00;6-7,00:00-24:00 for evenings and weekends only.
5. Confirm an action sends to that user. Under Alerts → Actions → Trigger actions, make sure an enabled action has an operation that notifies the user or user group you just edited.
6. Test it. Use the "Test" link on the media type, or temporarily lower a trigger threshold so it fires. Your phone rings and reads the problem name aloud.

Which alerts should ring the phone

Zabbix subjects start with "Problem:" and "Resolved:" by default. Filter on "Problem:" so recovery notices do not also ring the phone — or keep both if you want an all-clear call.

Filters are the whole game here. A phone call is worth using precisely because it is rare — if everything calls you, nothing does. Most people end up with one or two filters and leave the rest of their notifications as email.

A filter is one condition and one action:

• If From, To, CC, Subject orBody — equals, contains, begins, ends ormatches — your text.
• Then either ignore the message, or tick the phones to call. One filter can ring several people.

Anything no filter excludes goes to your default number, so you can start with "everything calls me" and tighten from there.

The Zabbix community has asked for native voice-call notifications for years; the standard answer is a custom alertscript. Sending email to Email2Phone achieves the same result without maintaining a script on the Zabbix server.

If you use Zabbix macros in the subject, keep it short — the call reads the subject and body aloud, so a subject like "Problem: {HOST.NAME} {EVENT.NAME}" is clearer over the phone than one packed with IDs.

What happens when the call comes

• Your phone rings and a voice reads the alert aloud — press 1 for the header, 2 for the body.
• You have to acknowledge it. Press 8 to save, 7 to delete or 5 to record a spoken reply. Until somebody presses one of those, the alert counts as undelivered.
• Not acknowledged? Email2Phone leaves voicemail if you enabled that, or calls back at 5, 15, 30, 60 and once more at 60 minutes, and keeps the message in your online history.
• Ring several numbers at once or one after another, and choose whether the escalation stops as soon as somebody acknowledges or continues until everyone has been called.
• A burst of alerts is one call, not one per email — Email2Phone tells you how many messages are waiting, so a tool that fires 80 notifications in two minutes rings you once.
• Quiet hours are set per phone number, so an alert can reach a mobile overnight and a desk phone during the day. Planned maintenance? Suspend delivery from the account settings.
• Replay anything later by dialing in — access numbers in the US, Canada and UK, free on every plan.

What it costs, wherever you are

Email2Phone calls any phone in any country. Plans start at $10/month for 40 call credits, and a minute costs 1 credit to the US and Canada and 1–6 credits elsewhere — most alert calls are well under a minute either way. An admin routing only genuine outages to a call typically stays inside the Basic plan.Check the rate for your own number with the calculator.

Zabbix questions

Other tools that work the same way

Email2Phone works with anything that can send an email, so the pattern above applies far beyond this one tool.

• Nagios
• PRTG Network Monitor
• UptimeRobot
• Synology NAS
• Microsoft 365 / Outlook
• Temperature & freezer sensors
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