Why every SaaS needs a status page
During an outage, your support inbox fills with the same question from a hundred customers: "Is it just me?" A public status page answers that question once and lets your team focus on the fix instead of replying to individual emails. It is also a transparency signal that builds trust during normal operation.
Step 1 — Pick a slug and brand
Choose a subdomain (e.g. status.yourcompany.com or yourcompany.appstatus.io) and upload a logo. Your status page should look like an extension of your main brand — never like a generic vendor page.
Step 2 — Map your monitors to public components
Customers care about services they recognise: "API", "Web dashboard", "Mobile app". Internal monitor names like prod-gateway-eu-west-1 mean nothing to them. Create user-facing component names and map your monitors to them. Group related components under headings if you have more than five.
Step 3 — Configure subscribers
Enable email subscriptions so customers can opt in to incident notifications. Some platforms also support SMS subscriptions. This is the highest-leverage feature on a status page — it transforms one-way communication into proactive customer success.
Step 4 — Set the right visibility
Start private while you build, switch to public when ready.
- •Public: anyone can view; SEO-indexable. Use for customer-facing services.
- •Password-protected: only customers with a shared password can view. Use for private SaaS or beta.
- •Private: only your workspace can view. Use during status page setup before launch.
Step 5 — Custom domain
A custom domain like status.yourcompany.com signals professionalism. Set up requires a CNAME record in your DNS pointing at your status page provider. TLS provisioning is typically automatic within a few minutes.
What to write during a real incident
Speak in customer terms. No internal jargon. No blame.
- •First update: state the impact, NOT the cause ("Login is currently failing for all users")
- •Second update: state the cause and ETA ("Database connection pool exhausted, restart in progress")
- •Final update: confirm resolution and time elapsed ("Restored at 14:42 UTC, total impact 18 minutes")
Common mistakes to avoid
Treat your status page like a customer-facing product. Test it. Iterate on the copy. Link to it prominently.
- •Showing too many internal services that confuse customers
- •Updating only after the incident is over
- •Using vague status like "minor degradation" with no detail
- •Setting up the page but never linking to it from your main site