Website availability
Whether the main site or app is reachable and responding. The component most customers check first.
Guide
How to Set Up a Public Status Page
A public status page gives customers a place to check when something feels wrong — before they reach for support. Setting one up takes minutes; maintaining it well takes a clear process.
Why customers need a public status page
When a website is slow, unavailable, or behaving unexpectedly, customers notice before most monitoring dashboards do. Without a public status page, their only option is to file a support ticket, post on social media, or walk away. Every one of those outcomes costs trust.
A status page doesn't prevent outages. It prevents the second problem that follows an outage — customers feeling left in the dark. A clear, up-to-date status page reduces support volume, sets expectations, and shows that the team is aware and working on the problem.
What a good status page includes
A useful status page shows three things: current component status, active incidents, and scheduled maintenance. Together those three pieces answer the question customers actually have — is something broken right now, do you know about it, and when will it be fixed?
NorthDuty's status page feature builds this from project settings. Add a title, slug, and description. Create status components that represent your monitored services — website availability, user journeys, visual monitoring, or custom components. When alert rules match, incidents appear automatically. When maintenance is planned, add a window and it shows up on the page alongside the reason and timing.
What to put on a status page
Components should map to services customers actually experience, not internal infrastructure.
Checkout or payment
For ecommerce teams, a dedicated checkout component tells customers whether buying is currently possible.
Login and account access
A separate component for login and account pages makes it clear when access is affected without implying the whole site is down.
API or integrations
For SaaS teams, an API component helps technical customers understand whether the problem is on your end or theirs.
Best practices for managing a status page
A status page is only useful if it stays current.
- Update incident status as work progresses — don't leave Investigating for hours without an update
- Write public incident summaries for customers, not engineers — avoid internal jargon
- Schedule maintenance windows before planned work begins so customers see it in advance
- Use component-level incidents to scope the impact — not every incident affects every service
- Resolve incidents promptly after recovery rather than leaving them open
- Link to the status page from your site footer or help center so customers know where to look
Conclusion
A public status page is one of the highest-leverage reliability investments a small team can make. It reduces support noise, builds trust through transparency, and gives customers a way to self-serve answers during outages.
NorthDuty lets you publish a status page, create status components, track incidents automatically from alert rules, and schedule maintenance windows — all from project settings, without a separate tool.
Related NorthDuty Pages
Keep exploring the feature pages and commercial routes connected to this topic.
Feature
Status Pages
Publish a public status page, track incidents automatically from alert rules, and schedule maintenance windows — all from NorthDuty project settings.
Explore Status PagesFeature
Alerting
Send NorthDuty alerts to email, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord, Google Chat, custom webhooks, Telegram, WhatsApp, and SMS. Route every website health signal to the channels your team already uses.
Explore AlertingFeature
Uptime Monitoring
Monitor uptime every 5 minutes by default with HTTP, SSL, DNS, blank-page detection, broken resources, JavaScript errors, and API call tracking.
Explore Uptime MonitoringFeature
User Journey Monitoring
NorthDuty AI suggests 2-5 website journeys. Enable them in one click or describe a custom multi-step flow in plain text.
Explore User Journey MonitoringPricing
Pricing
Explore NorthDuty pricing for website monitoring covering uptime checks, UI change detection, and user journey monitoring.
Compare pricing plansFrequently Asked Questions
Short answers that summarize the practical takeaways from this guide.
What should a public status page include?
Current component status, active incidents with current status and severity, and any scheduled maintenance. Together these answer whether something is broken, whether the team knows, and when it will be fixed.
How often should I update a status page during an incident?
At minimum every 30–60 minutes during an active incident, even if there's no new information. A brief 'still investigating' update is far better than silence, which signals that nothing is being done.
How does NorthDuty create incidents automatically?
When an alert rule threshold is crossed — health score drop, response time spike, failed user journey, or visual difference above a threshold — NorthDuty creates an incident. Subsequent alerts for the same rule add to the incident's occurrence count instead of sending a new notification.
What is a maintenance window?
A maintenance window is a scheduled period when alerts are suppressed because downtime is expected and planned. Adding a window in NorthDuty prevents alert noise during the maintenance period and displays the planned work on the public status page.
Call To Action
Start monitoring your website with NorthDuty today.
Use NorthDuty to publish a public status page, track incidents automatically, and schedule maintenance windows — all from project settings.