Glossary
Status page
A status page is a public page stating whether a service is working, hosted separately so it survives the outage it reports.
Also called Public status page, Service status page, System status page.
A status page is a public page that says whether a service is working. It exists because during an outage every affected customer independently asks the same question, and answering it once in public is enormously cheaper than answering it hundreds of times in a support queue — and considerably better for the customer, who gets an answer immediately rather than after a wait.
The single non-negotiable property is independence. A status page hosted on the infrastructure it reports on will be down exactly when it is needed, which is the most avoidable failure in this whole discipline. It should share nothing with production: not the servers, not the database, ideally not the DNS zone or the CDN account.
What makes one trustworthy is that it is updated when the news is bad. A page that stays green through an outage customers are watching in real time is worse than having no page at all — it converts an operational problem into a credibility problem. Automatic status from monitoring helps here, because it removes the moment where a human under pressure has to decide to publish something embarrassing.
The rest is craft. Component-level status so customers can see whether the part they use is affected; a history so the page has a track record rather than only a present tense; subscriptions so people are told rather than having to keep checking; and plain language, because a status page is read by customers rather than by engineers.
Most status pages are public, readable by anyone without a login, because the people asking are customers. A private status page is the same thing behind authentication, used for internal services, for an enterprise customer's dedicated environment, or for staff who need more detail than the public page gives. Many teams run both: a short public page, and a private one with every component listed.
| Section | What it tells the reader |
|---|---|
| Overall status | Whether anything is wrong right now |
| Component status | Whether the part of the service they use is affected |
| Active incidents | What is broken, what is being done, and when the next update is due |
| Scheduled maintenance | Planned work, announced before it starts |
| Uptime history | The track record over recent weeks, not only the present |
| Subscribe | A way to be told about changes instead of checking back |
Questions
What is a status page?
A status page is a public web page that shows whether a service is working, which parts are affected when it is not, and what is being done about it. Customers check it during an outage instead of contacting support.
What should a status page include?
An overall status, the status of each component, any active incident with its latest update, scheduled maintenance, a history of past incidents and uptime, and a way to subscribe to updates. Write it in plain language, because customers read it, not engineers.
What is the difference between a public and a private status page?
A public status page can be read by anyone without logging in, and is meant for customers. A private status page needs a login, and is used for internal services or for customers who should see more detail than the public page shows.
Is Statuspage the same thing as a status page?
Not quite. Statuspage, written as one word, is the name of Atlassian's hosted product. A status page is the general idea, and many tools provide one, Uptimely included. Atlassian's product publishes status but does not run the checks itself; it relies on another tool or a person to update it.
Should a status page be hosted separately?
Yes. A status page on the same servers as the product goes down with it, exactly when customers need it. Host it on separate infrastructure, and use a subdomain such as status.example.com so customers can find it.
In Uptimely
Uptimely status pages take their component status from your monitors automatically, can be public or private, run on your own domain, and carry incident history, scheduled maintenance and subscriber notifications. They need no login to read, and hosting them here is what buys the independence above: they share nothing with your production. They are not independent of Uptimely, though — the same application serves your page and your dashboard. The free plan includes one.
Uptimely's free plan includes a public status page whose component status comes from your monitors automatically, so it changes when the service does.
Create a free status page →Product feature
Part of the Uptimely monitoring glossary — plain definitions of the vocabulary uptime monitoring, incident response and status pages are discussed in. Something here read wrong to you? Email support@getuptimely.com.