Shouldn't I be using the Alert integration?

Configuration
1

Hi,
I love the Alert integration for the configuration options to repeat and skip first alerts.
Now with the problems related to the iOS app notifications I have reconfigured my alerts to get to slack instead. However, when I read the docs (Alert - Home Assistant) I see that only 1.1% of the installations are using the Alert Integration, so I think maybe I shouldn’t either.

What are the 99% of users using to get notified of low temperatures etc? Automations?

/Mattias

2

I can’t speak for all of the 99%, but generally yes, because they are much more powerful.

3

Automations. I have a lot of them and adding the occasional notification/alert to them is the smallest issue. Given, the alert integration might offer some nice functions but I (and maybe most other users) don’t see the need to deviate from standard practice. Also, looking at the alert documentation I could imagine that many of my alert oriented automations are more complex in the trigger and/or condition segment.

For completeness:

  • Notification: Use the normal notify services
  • Repeat: Easy to implement using the “repeat while” action
  • Skip: Look into the state-trigger “for” configuration
4

Never believe any statistics that you haven’t faked yourself. :wink:
No, seriously: Many users haven’t shared their statistical data.

5

Thank y’all for the feedback. I guess I’ll retire my alerts and go for automations then.

6

I’ve been playing around with a blended approach to have smarter alerts. The Alert integration handles triggering, repeats, and ‘done’ message and the Automation handles routing messages to the desired end point based on conditional logic.

Regarding the usage rates… as @pedolsky commented, a lot of users don’t share that data. I don’t have any empirical data to support it, but it seems like users who are more comfortable with configuring yaml-only integrations may also be less likely to participate in analytics… so Alerts (and other yaml-only integrations) may be especially under-represented in the stats.

Since, based on recent PRs, we may be seeing a way to create Alerts in the UI soon, those stats may start to increase in the near future.

7

I use alerts because it handles repeats, done messages, acknowledgement, turning off the alert all without any work,

I typically feed them with a binary template sensor in which I put any complex conditional logic.