What is a status page?
A status page is a public web page that shows whether a service is working right now, its recent history, and updates on any incident in progress.
In more detail
A good status page lists the parts customers care about (website, checkout, API), shows each one's current state and recent history, and carries plain-language updates during an incident. Subscriptions by email or RSS let customers hear about problems without checking.
It should not depend on the thing it reports on: if it is hosted on the same server as your site, it goes down with it.
Worked example
OwlHound's public status page lists each monitored site with its current state, a 90-day history bar, recent incidents and any notes you post, and visitors can subscribe by email or RSS. It updates every minute from the same checks that send your alerts, and a saved copy is served if our portal is ever unreachable.
See also
Related terms: Incident and Uptime. Free tool: Is it down?. How OwlHound helps: Public status page. All terms: monitoring glossary.
Frequently asked questions
Should a status page be on a separate domain?
It should be on separate infrastructure, so it stays up when your site doesn't. A subdomain such as status.example.com pointing elsewhere works.
What should a status page show?
Current state per component, recent incidents with times, a history of the last few months, and a way to subscribe to updates.
Does a small business need a status page?
If customers rely on your site to order, book or pay, a status page saves you answering the same question many times during an outage.
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