Public status page

What you will build

By the end of this tutorial you will have:

• A live public status page showing uptime for selected monitors
• A custom domain pointing to the page (Premium+)
• Email subscriptions enabled so customers can follow incidents

Time: approximately 10 minutes
Prerequisites: at least one monitor configured and working

Step 1 — Create the status page

1. In the sidebar, click Status Pages.
2. Click + New Status Page.
3. Fill in:

The slug is used in the default URL. Keep it short and memorable.

4. Under Monitors, select the monitors you want to display. Start with your most customer-facing services.
5. Click Save.

Your page is now live at the default platform URL shown at the top of the status page configuration.

Step 2 — Verify the page

Open the status page URL in a new browser tab (no login required). You should see:

• Your page title and the overall status banner
• Each selected monitor listed with its current status
• 90-day uptime bars per monitor
• 30-day uptime percentages

Step 3 — Add a custom domain (Premium+)

1. In the status page settings, enter your custom domain in the Custom domain field — for example, status.yourcompany.com.
2. Copy the CNAME target value shown below the field.
3. In your DNS provider, add a CNAME record:

Type:    CNAME
Name:    status
Value:   <CNAME target from HOWLOPS>
TTL:     3600

4. Click Verify domain in HOWLOPS. DNS propagation may take a few minutes.
5. Once verified, SSL is provisioned automatically via Let's Encrypt — allow up to 5 minutes.

Step 4 — Enable email subscriptions (Standard+)

Email subscriptions let visitors receive automatic notifications when an incident opens or resolves.

1. Open the status page settings and go to the Subscriptions tab.
2. Toggle Allow email subscriptions to On.
3. Click Save.

Visitors will now see a Subscribe to updates button on your status page. They enter their email, receive a double opt-in confirmation, and are subscribed.

Step 5 — Communicate during an incident

When an incident is active on any of your monitored services, it appears automatically on the status page. To add a customer-visible message:

1. Go to Incidents and open the active incident.
2. Fill in the Public message field (e.g. "We are investigating elevated error rates in the EU West region.").
3. Click Save. The message appears on the status page immediately.

Post follow-up updates as the incident progresses. Each update is timestamped and shown in chronological order.

Step 6 — Customise the page (optional)

Under Status Pages → Configuration:

What's next

• Tutorials: Set up Slack alerts — get notified in Slack when incidents open
• Getting started: First status page — quick reference for status page basics
• Concepts: Incidents — understand the incident lifecycle