What is a status page?

A status page is a public place where customers can see whether your services are working, what an incident affects, and when maintenance is planned.

Instead of leaving users to wonder whether a problem is with their connection or your service, a status page gives them a shared source of information. It can show individual components, recent uptime, incident updates, and maintenance notices.

Status pages and uptime monitoring do different jobs

Uptime monitoring checks whether an endpoint responds. An HTTP check might test your website, while ping and TCP checks test network reachability or a specific port. Host agents can add details such as CPU and memory usage.

A public status page explains what those results mean for customers. A failed check alone cannot tell users which features are affected or what your team is doing. Combine automated service health with clear incident messages so people can understand the impact.

What should you put on a public status page?

• Recognizable service names. Use names customers know, such as Website, API, or Customer Dashboard. Group related services so the page is easy to scan.
• Current health and uptime history. Show which services are operational and how availability has changed. Explain any gaps in monitoring rather than presenting missing samples as confirmed uptime.
• Incident updates. State what is affected, when the issue began, and when you expect to provide another update. Close the incident once recovery is confirmed.
• Scheduled maintenance. Give the date, timezone, affected services, and expected impact. Publish the notice ahead of the work so users can plan around it.

Who benefits from a status page?

SaaS teams can communicate the health of their application and API. Hosting providers can separate regions and customer-facing services. Agencies can use workspaces to organize client infrastructure. Even a small project benefits from a clear place to explain interruptions.

Publish only the information your audience needs. A status page does not require exposing every internal hostname or host metric. Keep private infrastructure details private and make public components understandable without technical context.

How to create a free status page with VigilPing

1. Create a VigilPing account and set up your workspace.
2. Add monitors for your services and choose which ones should be public.
3. Organize them into groups and configure your workspace branding. You can also configure a custom domain using the DNS instructions.
4. Share the public URL and link it from your website or help pages. Use the dashboard to publish incidents and maintenance notices.

VigilPing is free during beta. The free plan includes 25 monitors, one workspace, three probes, and 120-second checks. See the current free plan for the offering and the status page FAQs for common questions.

Keep it useful after launch

Review the page from a customer's perspective, including on mobile. Test that public links work and that component names make sense. During an incident, provide a useful next-update time even when you do not yet have a recovery estimate. After maintenance, confirm completion so an old notice does not create confusion.