Documentation

Getting Started with Tessera

Tessera is a self-hosted uptime monitor for Windows. You install it on a Windows machine on your network, and it watches your servers, websites, ports, and TLS certificates, then alerts you when something goes wrong. Everything runs on your own hardware, and your data never leaves your network.

This guide takes you from download to your first monitored endpoint in about ten minutes.

1. System requirements

  • Windows 64-bit: Windows 10 or 11, or Windows Server 2016 or later.
  • About 300 MB of free disk space (Tessera bundles everything it needs, including its own runtime, so there is nothing else to install).
  • A modern web browser to open the dashboard.

Tessera runs as a Windows service, so it starts automatically with the machine and keeps monitoring in the background.

2. Install

  1. Download TesseraSetup.exe from your purchase email or from gettessera.io/download.
  2. Run the installer and approve the Windows prompt to allow it to make changes.
  3. When asked, choose the port the web interface should use (the default is 8080). You can keep the default unless that port is already in use.
  4. Finish the installer. Tessera installs as a Windows service named Tessera and starts automatically.

3. Open the dashboard and create your admin account

  1. Open your browser to http://localhost:8080/ (use the port you chose during install).
  2. The first time you open Tessera, it shows a one-time setup screen. Create your administrator account: a username, a password, and an email address.
  3. Sign in with the account you just created.

To reach the dashboard from another computer on your network, use the Tessera machine's IP address instead of localhost, for example http://192.168.1.50:8080/, and make sure that port is allowed through the Windows firewall. You can also set which network address Tessera binds to under Settings.

4. Add your first target

A "target" is anything you want to monitor. On the dashboard, add a target and fill in:

  • Name - a label, for example "Company Website".
  • Type - choose how to check it:
    • HTTP - for websites and web services. Enter the full URL (for example https://example.com). You can optionally require that the page contains specific text.
    • TCP - for any service on a port (databases, mail servers, custom apps). Enter the host and a port number.
    • Ping (ICMP) - for basic "is this host reachable" checks. Enter the host or IP.
  • Check interval - how often to check.
  • Down after - how long a target must be failing before Tessera raises an alert, which prevents noise from brief blips.

Save it, and Tessera begins checking immediately. The dashboard shows each target's status, latency, and recent history.

5. Set up email alerts

So Tessera can email you when something goes down:

  1. Go to Settings and enter your SMTP server details (host, port, username, password, and the "from" address). These are the outgoing-mail settings from your email provider.
  2. Use the test email button to confirm it works.
  3. Turn on Email alerts.

You can send alerts to a global list of recipients, and also set per-tag or per-target recipients so the right people hear about the right systems. Tessera emails you when a target goes down, when it recovers, and when a TLS certificate is close to expiring.

Prefer Slack, SMS, or another app? Tessera can also send a webhook on every alert. See Webhooks and Zapier.

6. Activate your license

Tessera starts with a free trial so you can evaluate it. When you are ready to continue:

  1. Go to the License page.
  2. Paste your license key and click Activate. Your key is in your purchase receipt email (check your spam folder if you do not see it), and also in your Lemon Squeezy account at app.lemonsqueezy.com/my-orders.

Your plan determines how many endpoints you can monitor. If you ever change machines, deactivate the license on the old machine (or from the License page) and activate it on the new one.

7. Optional: serve the dashboard over HTTPS

By default the dashboard is served over HTTP, which is fine on a trusted internal network. To serve it over HTTPS:

  1. Obtain a certificate for the machine as a PKCS#12 file (.pfx or .p12).
  2. Go to Settings > TLS Certificate, upload the file with its password, then enable HTTPS.
  3. Restart the Tessera service to apply it.

You're set

That's the core loop: install, add targets, get alerted. From here you can explore tags, user accounts and roles, maintenance windows, reports, and a public status page. Most of it is self-explanatory in the interface.

If you get stuck, see the FAQ or email support@gettessera.io.