Your status page is the first place your customers look when something goes wrong, so it matters a lot whether it's honest, clear, and actually useful. Here are examples of good status pages, what makes them work, and how to build one your customers will actually trust.
What a good status page looks like
Let's start with the good ones. Here's what they have in common:
- Component-level status: They don't just say "everything is fine" or "everything is down"—they break things down into components (API, dashboard, payments, etc.) so customers can see exactly what's affected.
- Honest, clear history: They show a clear history of past incidents, with timestamps, what happened, and when it was fixed—no hiding anything.
- Subscriptions: Customers can subscribe to updates so they don't have to keep checking back manually.
- Your branding: It looks like your product, not a third-party tool, so customers trust it.
- Tied to live monitoring: The status updates automatically based on your monitors, so you don't have to remember to update it manually.
Why manual status pages fail (and why you should avoid them)
The worst status pages are the ones you have to update manually. The problem is that when an outage hits, you're busy fixing it—you don't have time to update the status page. So customers check it, it says everything is fine even though things are down, and they lose trust.
Even if you do remember to update it, manual status pages are always out of date by definition—you're always playing catch-up. The best status pages are tied directly to your live monitoring, so they update automatically without you having to do anything.
How to build a good status page
Here's how to build a status page your customers will trust:
- Tie it to your live monitoring: This is non-negotiable. If you're using Tallwatch, status pages are built-in and tied directly to your monitors, so they update automatically.
- Break it into components: Group your monitors into components (API, dashboard, payments, etc.) so customers can see exactly what's affected.
- Add incident history: Show a clear history of past incidents with timestamps, what happened, and when it was fixed.
- Add subscriptions: Let customers subscribe to updates via email (Slack and RSS are on our roadmap).
- Brand it: Use your logo, colors, and domain so it looks like your product.
- Be honest: Don't hide anything—customers will respect it, and they'll trust you more for it.
A note on "uptime percentages
A status page that says "99.9% uptime" means nothing if it's not honest. The real metric is whether your customers trust the page when something goes wrong. If you have an outage and your status page is honest about it and updates quickly, they'll forgive a small dip in your uptime number a lot more than they'll forgive a status page that lies to them.
Build yours today
If you're using Tallwatch, you can build a status page on your own domain with your branding in a couple of minutes. If you're not, you can start free and get a status page on your own domain in the free tier, no credit card required.