The StatusCat blog
What is a status page?
A status page tells your users what's working and what isn't. Here's what a status page is, why it reduces support load and builds trust, and what makes a good one.
A status page is a public web page that shows whether your service is up, degraded, or down — right now and over time. When something breaks, it's the single place your users can check instead of emailing support or guessing.
Think of the pages you've visited during an outage: "Is it just me, or is X down?" A status page answers that question for your own customers.
What a good status page shows
- Current status of your service and its components (website, API, dashboard, payments…).
- Active incidents with a short, honest description and updates as you work.
- Uptime history — a track record of reliability over the last weeks or months.
- Subscribe options so users can get notified of incidents by email.
Why bother?
- It slashes support load. During an incident, a status page absorbs the "is it down?" questions that would otherwise flood your inbox and chat.
- It builds trust. Being transparent about downtime — and showing a strong uptime history the rest of the time — signals a serious, reliable product.
- It sets expectations. A clear "investigating / identified / monitoring / resolved" flow tells customers you're on it.
- It's a sales asset. Prospects and enterprise buyers check status pages. A solid uptime record is quiet proof of reliability.
What makes a status page work
- It stays up when you don't. Host it separately from your app (a subdomain pointed at your monitoring provider) so it's reachable during the incidents it exists for.
- It updates automatically. Tie it to your monitoring so component status reflects reality without manual toggling.
- It's honest and prompt. A vague or late update is worse than none. Post early, update often, and mark resolved clearly.
- It's on your brand. A custom domain and your logo make it feel like part of your product, not a bolt-on.
Getting one
You don't need a separate tool. StatusCat monitors your services and turns those results into a custom-domain status page with private-page options, email subscribers and 90-day uptime history — on the same plan as your monitoring. (If you're comparing dedicated tools, see our Statuspage alternative breakdown.)
New to all this? Start with what uptime monitoring is. Status pages are included free for 50 monitors.