A status page is a public page that tells customers whether your product is working, and what you’re doing about it when it isn’t. For a SaaS, it turns a flood of “is it down?” messages into one link, and it shows customers you take reliability seriously before anything goes wrong.
Here’s what a good status page includes, and seven status page tools small SaaS teams use, with prices from each company’s own site.
What a good status page shows
- The current state in one line at the top: all systems working, or not.
- Components. Your app, API, dashboard and integrations, each with its own status, so a slow API doesn’t look like a total outage.
- Live incident updates. Investigating, identified, monitoring, resolved, each with a short note and a time.
- Uptime history. Daily bars for the last few months. Honest history builds more trust than a page that’s always green.
- Planned maintenance, announced in advance.
- Subscriptions. Let customers get updates by email, so they don’t have to keep checking.
- Your own domain, like status.yourproduct.com.
Monitoring and status page: together or apart?
Some status page tools only publish what you type. Others watch your product too, and update the page on their own when a check fails. For a small team, the second kind saves the worst part of an outage: remembering to post an update while you’re busy fixing it. The best setups also connect to support, so customers asking in chat get pointed at the live incident.
Seven status page tools compared
| Tool | Free plan | Paid plans from | Monitoring built in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rectify | Status page and 1 monitor | $29 a month, with support, feedback and more | Yes |
| Atlassian Statuspage | 100 subscribers, 25 components | $29 a month (Hobby) | No |
| Instatus | 200 subscribers, 15 monitors | Shown on its site | Yes |
| Better Stack | 1 status page, 10 monitors (personal projects) | $34 a month per on-call responder | Yes |
| UptimeRobot | 1 status page, 50 monitors (hobby use) | Shown in your local currency | Yes |
| Checkly | Included with the Hobby plan | Status pages from $9 a month, billed yearly | Yes |
| Cronitor | 1 basic status page, 5 monitors | Branded pages $25 a month | Yes |
1. Rectify
In Rectify the status page is part of your public portal (on your own domain from the Launch plan), next to your roadmap, changelog and help centre. It shows an overall status banner, live incidents with every update, daily uptime bars and response times per monitor, past incidents and planned maintenance, and visitors subscribe by email. You choose which monitors appear.
It’s driven by Rectify’s uptime monitoring: incidents open on their own when checks fail, and Quanta, the AI teammate, drafts the update from the check history. Maintenance windows pause checks and tell subscribers in advance. Because support lives in the same workspace, the people asking “is it down?” get pointed at the incident.
Price: a status page on every plan, including the free one; paid plans from $29 a month include support, feedback, the roadmap and more. See uptime monitoring and status page and the public portal.
2. Atlassian Statuspage
Statuspage is the long-standing name for publishing status updates, and many big products use it. It doesn’t monitor anything itself: you update it, or connect it to your monitoring. The free plan covers 100 subscribers and 25 components. Public pages then run Hobby $29, Startup $99, Business $399 and Enterprise $1,499 a month, with SMS and webhook notifications from Startup up. Private pages for internal teams start at $79 a month.
Pick it if you want the most familiar format and already run monitoring elsewhere.
3. Instatus
Instatus combines status pages with monitoring. Its free Starter plan includes a public status page, 200 subscribers, 15 monitors with 2-minute checks and email alerts. Pro adds custom domains, SMS alerts and 30-second checks, and yearly billing is 25% off.
Pick it if you want a good-looking status page with monitoring included, without a full incident management suite.
4. Better Stack
Better Stack is a full incident management suite: uptime monitoring, on-call schedules with unlimited calls and SMS, logs and status pages. The free plan for personal projects includes 10 monitors and one status page. Extra status pages are $15 a month, with SSO, IP allowlisting and white-labelling as paid options. A responder licence is $34 a month per on-call person, or $29 billed yearly.
Pick it if you have an engineering team sharing an on-call rota. See Rectify vs Better Stack.
5. UptimeRobot
UptimeRobot’s free plan, meant for hobby and non-profit projects, includes 50 monitors with 5-minute checks and one status page. Paid plans add more status pages (3 on Solo, 100 on Team, unlimited on Scale) and faster checks.
Pick it if you need many simple monitors and a basic status page for little money.
6. Checkly
Checkly is monitoring as code for developers, with API and browser checks written in Playwright. Status pages are priced separately: free on Hobby, then $9 a month on Starter and $30 on Team, billed yearly.
Pick it if you want to test full user journeys and publish their status.
7. Cronitor
Cronitor monitors cron jobs, heartbeats, websites and APIs. The free Hacker plan includes 5 monitors and a basic status page with 50 subscribers. On Business, branded status pages are $25 a month each and private pages $50.
Pick it if scheduled jobs are the thing most likely to break.
How to write a status update customers trust
- Post fast. A short “we’re investigating” within minutes beats a perfect update an hour later.
- Say what’s affected, in customers’ words: “Some people can’t log in”, not “auth service degraded”.
- Update on a rhythm, even if nothing has changed. Silence reads as chaos.
- Close properly. Say it’s fixed, what happened and what you’ll change.
Questions founders ask
Do I need a status page if I’m small?
Once customers pay you, yes. It costs nothing on most tools, and it’s the first place people look when something feels slow.
Should the status page be on my own domain?
Yes, if you can. status.yourproduct.com looks trustworthy and is easy to remember. Most tools support it, often on paid plans.
Should my status page be updated automatically?
Automatic updates are faster, but add a human note as soon as you can. “Checkout is down, we’re on it” from a person reassures customers more than a red bar.
Prices and features are taken from each company’s own site: Rectify, Atlassian Statuspage, Instatus, Better Stack, UptimeRobot, Checkly and Cronitor. Prices change, so check theirs before you decide. More on monitoring in uptime monitoring tools for SaaS.
Tell them before they ask
The best status page updates itself and points every worried customer to the same place. Hire Rectify free and Quanta keeps yours current.
