Incident Management
The Best Free Status Page Tools in 2023
Having a status page is essential for any online business. It enables you to communicate with your users when you need it most: during the heat of an incident.
You can publish updates on any ongoing incidents, showcase historical uptime and performance, and notify about maintenance windows all from a single page.
At Cronitor, we've put together a list of the 5 best status page tools you can use, either free or open source:
1. Cronitor
Cronitor Status Pages are simple, fast and come with active monitoring built-in. That means you can set up uptime monitoring for your websites and APIs, and also create your status page using a single service.
Cronitor has a free tier which includes 5 monitors, 1 user and free basic status pages. Once you need more you can upgrade to the business plan in which you only pay for what you use (eg. $25/mo for branded status pages).
Why pick Cronitor Status Pages?
- Generous free tier includes
- Easily customizable with your domain, company logo and support links.
- Automated incident management can publish and resolve incidents without you lifting a finger.
- Private pages for your internal teams using IP ranges or password protection.
Check out the live demo.
2. Atlassian Statuspage
Atlassian Statuspage is a well-known alternative which has been in the market for many years. It offers a free tier which might be enough for the needs of many businesses, but do consider that as your requirements grow the price tag grows substantially too.
The free plan gives you 100 subscribers, 2 team members, 2 metrics, and email or Slack notifications.
Their paid plans start at $29/mo and go all the way up to $1,499 depending on the number of subscribers, team members and customization features needed. For example, for custom CSS/HTML/JS you’d need the $399/mo plan.
Why pick Atlassian Statuspage?
- You need specific features such as custom CSS/HTML/JS, and can afford the price tag.
- You're already using Atlassian's products and would like to remain within their platform.
- The free plan is enough for your needs.
3. Freshstatus
Freshstatus is a status page service by Freshworks. You can sign up for free and it comes with various integrations such as Twitter, Slack, Webhooks, and even Freshworks own services: Freshping, Freshdesk, Freshservice. If you're already on their platform it's a great way to get a status page.
Why pick Freshstatus?
- You're already using other products by Freshworks and want to remain within their platform.
- You'd like to use their Freshping, Freshdesk or Freshservice integrations.
- Supports customizing the alert emails.
4. Instatus
Instatus is a hosted status page service that focuses on simple and fast pages. It includes features such as custom CSS and Javascript, multi-language support and status widgets for your website.
Why pick Instatus?
- Offers free tier and competitive paid plans.
- Unlimited subscribers and teammates.
- Your project requires localization features.
- You don't need built-in monitoring and want to use external tools for this.
5. Vigil
Vigil is an open source alternative that combines status pages with uptime monitoring. It's useful if you want to have even more control over your monitoring infrastructure and feel comfortable managing your own servers.
As of September 2022 it's still actively maintained. Which is why we've chosen to recommend this project over other popular open source alternatives such as Staytus, Cachet or Statusfy.
It's important a project is being actively developed, particularly when it comes to security patches and bug fixes. Please do your own research before self-hosting any solution in your own infrastructure.
Why pick Vigil?
- Open source and actively maintained.
- Uptime monitoring built-in.
- Clean dashboards.
- Lots of configuration options.
Where to go from here
In this article we've explored our top picks when it comes to free and open source status page tools. We hope this proves useful in your search for which tool is best for your needs.
Last but not least, be sure to check out real-world examples of status pages. It's a great way to understand how various companies make use of their page and how to make the most out of yours.