Last updated: 2026-01-29
If your product has users, it will have incidents. The question is not whether something breaks. The question is whether customers hear about it from you, or from a confused wave of support tickets.
This guide is a practical playbook for building a status page that actually works in 2026: clear components, honest incident updates, predictable maintenance communication, and templates you can copy and paste.
TL;DR
- A status page is your public source of truth during downtime.
- Reliability is not just uptime. It is communication, speed, and consistency.
- If your status page is slow, vague, or offline during incidents, it is not a status page. It is a decorative banner.
What a great status page does
A strong status page has one job: answer this fast.
“Is it down, what is impacted, and when will you update me again?”
Everything else is optional.
A great status page:
- stays online even when your app is down
- shows component level status (not a single green dot)
- updates on a predictable cadence during incidents
- separates incidents from maintenance
- offers subscriptions (email at minimum)
- is usable on mobile (most people check status on phones)
The foundation
1) Host it separately
If your status page lives on the same infrastructure as your web app, you have built a status page that fails at the exact moment it is needed.
Best practice:
- host status pages on separate infrastructure
- use a dedicated subdomain like
status.yourdomain.com(see: Connecting a Custom Domain) - keep assets lightweight (no heavy JS bundles required)
2) Make it fast and readable
During an outage, nobody is admiring your CSS. They are scanning for the answer.
Best practice:
- default to short updates (2 to 5 lines)
- use impact language people understand (“checkout failing” beats “minor disruption”)
- avoid internal jargon and vendor blame
3) Define components that match customer reality
Most status pages fail because “components” are defined by the database schema, not by user expectations.
Bad components:
- “backend”
- “cluster A”
- “kubernetes”
Good components:
- API
- Dashboard
- Authentication
- Webhooks
- Email delivery
- Billing and payments
If you’re not sure how to structure components and groups, use a guide like: Managing Components and Component Groups.
Incident best practices
If you need a step-by-step “how to create an incident” walkthrough, see: Creating and Managing Incidents.
Incident lifecycle states
Use consistent states. Customers learn your rhythm.
- Investigating
- Identified
- Monitoring
- Resolved
Optional:
- Mitigated (if fully resolved is not true yet)
- Post-incident review published (if you publish postmortems)
Update cadence that reduces panic
A predictable cadence reduces support load because customers stop asking “any update?”
Recommended cadence:
- Major incident: every 15 to 30 minutes
- Degraded performance: every 30 to 60 minutes
- Long running workarounds: every time something meaningful changes, plus a scheduled next update
Always include a next update time if you do not have new information.
Example:
We are still investigating elevated 5xx errors. Next update by 14:30 UTC.
What every incident update should include
Use this tiny structure every time:
- Impact: who is affected and what is broken
- Scope: components and regions
- Action: what you are doing right now
- Next update: when you will post again
Copy/paste incident update templates
If you want these templates available inside your dashboard during outages, use Incident Templates.
Investigating
We are investigating reports of [symptom].
Impact: [who is affected + what they see].
Next update by [time + timezone].
Identified
We identified the cause as [short description].
Impact: [what is impacted]. Workaround: [if any].
We are applying a fix. Next update by [time + timezone].
Monitoring
A fix has been deployed and we are monitoring recovery.
Impact should be reduced. We are watching [metric or symptom].
Next update by [time + timezone].
Resolved
This incident is resolved.
Summary: [one sentence].
Root cause: [one sentence].
Region specific incidents
If only Europe is affected, do not mark the entire world red. That creates unnecessary fear.
Best practice:
- include region context in the title
- split incidents if multiple regions have different causes
Example titles:
- “Degraded performance in EU region”
- “Webhook delays in North America”
Maintenance best practices
Maintenance is not an incident. Treat it differently.
Maintenance workflow
- Announce
- Remind
- Start update
- Progress updates
- Complete update
For a practical setup guide, see: Scheduling Planned Maintenance.
Copy/paste maintenance templates
Announcement (24 to 72 hours before)
Scheduled maintenance on [date] from [start] to [end] [timezone].
Expected impact: [none | degraded | brief downtime].
Affected components: [list].
Start
Maintenance has started. We will post updates here.
Next update by [time + timezone].
Complete
Maintenance is complete. All systems are operating normally.
Maintenance honesty rule
If you expect downtime, say downtime. Customers forgive downtime. They do not forgive surprise.
Subscriptions and notifications
Subscriptions turn a status page into a communication channel.
Minimum:
- email subscriptions
Setup guide: Managing Status Page Subscribers.
Nice to have:
- RSS and Atom feeds
- webhooks
- Slack or Discord notifications
Operational best practice:
- never “fire and forget” notifications in request paths
- use a queue and retry strategy
Uptime history and metrics that matter
A status page without history is a live blog. History builds trust.
Best practice:
- show 7, 30, 90 day uptime
- show latency trends (not just uptime)
- show incidents and maintenance on the timeline
If you want an explanation of what the dashboard charts represent (availability, response time, and trends), see: Analytics Dashboard.
Avoid:
- hiding incidents because it looks bad
Transparency compounds.
Post-incident summaries
If you want to look like a serious team, publish post-incident summaries for major incidents.
A good post-incident summary includes:
- timeline
- customer impact
- root cause in plain language
- what you changed
- what you will do next
Keep it short. Nobody wants a novel during recovery week.
Common mistakes that make status pages useless
Hosting it on the same infrastructure
When your app goes down, your status page goes down too.
One vague status for everything
“Operational” tells customers nothing if webhooks are broken.
No timestamps, no cadence
If updates have no timestamps and no next update time, customers assume you are hiding.
Soft language that hides impact
“Minor disruption” is meaningless.
Using the status page as marketing
During incidents, customers want clarity, not conversion.
Status page launch checklist
Use this as a “do not embarrass yourself” checklist:
- Separate infrastructure from the main app
- Custom domain (
status.yourdomain.com) - Components match customer facing features
- Email subscriptions enabled
- Incident states and cadence defined
- Maintenance workflow defined
- Uptime and latency history visible
- Post-incident summaries for major incidents
- Multi-region monitoring enabled
SEO and trust
A status page can help SEO indirectly:
- incident pages can rank for long-tail reliability searches
- public transparency improves conversion and reduces churn
SEO best practices:
- keep incident titles descriptive
- avoid duplicate content across incidents
- publish post-incident summaries with clear headings
Practical use cases
SaaS (B2B)
Use a component model that matches what customers buy: API, dashboard, SSO, background jobs, email delivery.
API first product
Communicate error rate and latency changes. Developers care about 5xx, timeouts, and webhooks.
E-commerce
Be direct about checkout impact. Announce maintenance ahead of time.
Open-source
Keep it lightweight and honest. Tie incidents to releases when relevant.
How StatusPage.me fits
If you want the fast path to a production ready status page (custom domain, multi-region checks, incidents, subscriptions), try StatusPage.me.
If you’re reading related guides:
- Status Page vs Uptime Monitoring
- Public vs Private Status Pages
- How Status Pages Reduce Support Tickets
- Do I Need a Status Page for a Small SaaS?
- Self-Hosted vs Hosted Status Pages
People Also Ask
How often should you update a status page during an incident?
During active incidents, update whenever you learn something meaningful. For major incidents, a common cadence is every 15 to 30 minutes, plus an explicit “next update at …” to set expectations.
Should a status page be hosted separately?
Yes. Hosting it on separate infrastructure ensures it stays reachable when your primary app or upstream providers fail.
What should a good status page include?
Real-time component status, incident updates with timestamps, maintenance notices, uptime history, subscriptions, and clear communication.
FAQ
Is a status page the same as uptime monitoring?
No. Monitoring detects problems. A status page communicates problems and progress to humans.
Do small SaaS teams need a status page?
If customers depend on your product, yes. It reduces support load and protects trust during inevitable incidents.
What is the best status page update format?
Short, timestamped updates that include impact, scope, action, and a next update time.
Tags: status page, incident communication, incident management, uptime monitoring, maintenance, postmortem, reliability
