ServerStats can send alerts to a Discord channel today through a channel webhook. The ServerStats bot shown in some demos is a preview: it is not enabled in production yet. If you need downtime or lag notifications, use the webhook setup in the Discord alerts guide.
What works today
Create a webhook in your Discord channel, add it as an alert destination in ServerStats, and choose it for an alert rule. Supported rules include server offline, threshold and lag-spike alerts; plan limits vary. A webhook can post alerts but cannot read your messages, view members or answer commands. The alert setup guide has the steps and advice on cooldowns.
What the bot is planned to add
The planned bot will provide /stats and /status for live player counts and server status, /player and /top lookups, a channel name that shows the player count, and /link for linking Discord members to their in-game profiles. It is also designed to deliver the weekly report to a chosen channel and to show Discord member growth and linked-member conversion on paid plans. /ask depends on the separate AI assistant and is also coming soon.
Those features require a production Discord bot token and installation flow. There is no bot invite link or live bot command today. The pricing page marks these features as coming soon.
Permissions planned for the bot
The bot is designed to request View Channels, Send Messages and Embed Links. A live player counter would additionally need Manage Channel on the chosen channel. It is designed without Administrator or Message Content access. Until the bot is enabled, no bot permissions are requested at all; Discord webhook alerts work with the channel webhook alone.
How this differs from Discord activity analytics
ServerStats measures the game server: uptime, player counts, lag and play sessions. A Discord activity bot measures conversations and voice activity inside Discord. The planned ServerStats bot will bring game-server numbers into Discord; it will not measure message content or voice activity.
Set up a useful alert channel now
Use a private staff channel if an alert could expose operational details such as server names, restarts or lag patterns. In Discord, open that channel's settings, choose Integrations → Webhooks, create a webhook and copy its URL. In ServerStats, open Alerts, add a Discord webhook destination, paste the URL and send a test. Then make one rule for the problem you care about most. Free allows one rule; Operator allows 25; Network has no rule count limit. For an offline alert, choose how long the server must be unavailable before the notification fires. For performance, use a sustained threshold or lag-spike burst rather than one slow tick.
A channel webhook URL is a secret: anyone who has it can post to that channel. Share it only with the service that sends the alert. If it is exposed, delete that webhook in Discord, create a replacement and update the destination in ServerStats. A webhook does not require a bot invite, a role or access to message history.
Your alert has two parts: a rule decides when a condition is serious enough, and a destination decides where it goes. You can change the rule's duration and cooldown when you have seen real server traffic. A common first setup is an offline rule for every public server and a lag rule on the server that earns the most revenue. The full alert guide walks through those choices.
When the bot launches
Webhooks will keep working. The bot is optional, so existing alert rules stay as they are. Install the bot only if you want its commands, the live player-count channel or member-to-player analysis. Check the changelog for the launch announcement before looking for a bot invite. Until that announcement, no ServerStats bot invite exists, so treat any invite link you are sent as untrustworthy.
A webhook posts a notification. It cannot answer a question, look up a player or rename a channel, and that narrow scope suits a private staff channel. The planned bot is for people who want current numbers without opening the dashboard. Neither reads chat messages. If your community already runs a Discord activity bot, keep it: ServerStats covers the game server's own data, not conversations or voice.
Start with the webhook, because it is available now. Add the bot later only if its commands would save your staff a trip to the dashboard. A webhook needs no bot invite, no role and no extra Discord permissions.
Until then, the dashboard holds the retention, revenue and performance charts, and the Discord alert tells staff when to open it. On Network, the read-only API and MCP tools retrieve analytics for your own integrations, separately from the bot.