A status page is a page, usually at status.yourcompany.com, that shows whether your service is working and carries your updates when it isn't. During an outage it's where customers go to find out what's happening without opening a support ticket.
What a status page is for
It answers "is it down?" before customers ask support. It shows the current state of each part of your product. And it keeps a record of past incidents and uptime, which prospects and procurement teams often look at before they sign.
Public or private
Anyone can open a public page, and most customer-facing products use one. A private page sits behind a password or login and suits internal tools or products that haven't launched. You can start private and make it public later. Either way, show only what is true: a new component with no data yet should say so instead of showing green.
What goes on it
- Components: the parts of your product (API, dashboard, payments), each with a current status.
- Uptime history: 90 days per component, so visitors can see your record over time.
- Incidents: what happened, what you did, and when it was resolved.
- Scheduled maintenance: planned work announced in advance so it isn't mistaken for an outage.
- Subscriptions: incident updates by email or RSS, so customers don't have to keep refreshing.
Setting one up
Create components named the way customers think about your product. Attach an uptime monitor to each so its status comes from real checks. Choose public or private, then publish. Add your own domain, with automatic TLS, when you want the page on status.yourcompany.com. After that, the ongoing work is posting an update when an incident happens, and Sentivel can draft those for you to review.
If your product relies on outside providers such as a cloud host, a payment processor or an email service, you can map those too, so a provider's outage shows on your page with the provider named as the cause. The guide on monitoring third-party dependencies covers how.