How to Set Up a Free Status Page for Your Website

When something breaks, your users notice before you do. They hit your API and get a timeout. They refresh your app and see a blank page. Then they do what any reasonable person would do: they check Twitter, search your docs for a status page link, or fire off a support email asking if you are aware of the issue.

A public status page short-circuits all of that. It tells your users, "Yes, we know. Here is what is happening and when we expect it to be fixed." It builds trust, reduces support ticket volume, and signals that you take reliability seriously. The good news is you do not need to pay $30/month or self-host a Rails app to get one. CronAlert includes a status page on every plan, including the free tier.

What you get with CronAlert's status page

Before walking through the setup, here is a quick overview of what the status page actually provides:

• 90-day uptime history -- each monitor you add to the page shows a visual bar of daily uptime over the past 90 days, so visitors can see your track record at a glance
• Current status indicators -- green when everything is up, red when something is down, with real-time updates as CronAlert checks your endpoints
• Active and recent incidents -- if an outage triggers an incident, it appears on the page with a full timeline of updates as you post them
• Atom feed -- your status page includes an Atom feed that visitors can subscribe to in any feed reader, so they get notified of incidents without checking the page manually
• Custom domain support -- on Pro plans and above, you can serve the page from your own domain (e.g., status.yourapp.com) instead of the default CronAlert URL
• Selective monitor display -- you choose exactly which monitors appear on the page, so you can keep internal services private while showing customer-facing endpoints

All of this is included on the free plan. The only limitation is the number of status pages you can create (one on free, more on paid plans).

Setting up your status page

The whole process takes about five minutes. You need a CronAlert account and at least one monitor configured before you create the status page.

If you do not have an account yet, sign up for free. No credit card required. Once you are in the dashboard, create monitors for the endpoints you want to display on your status page. Each monitor takes a URL that CronAlert will check on a schedule -- every 3 minutes on the free plan, every 1 minute on paid plans.

For a typical web application, you might create monitors for:

• Your main website (e.g., https://yourapp.com)
• Your API (e.g., https://api.yourapp.com/health)
• Any critical third-party dependencies your users interact with directly

In the CronAlert dashboard, click Status Pages in the sidebar. This is where you manage all of your public (or private) status pages. On the free plan, you will see a single slot available.

Click the create button and fill in the details:

• Name -- the title displayed at the top of your status page (e.g., "Acme App Status")
• Slug -- the URL-friendly identifier for your page. This must be lowercase, alphanumeric, and can include hyphens. It determines your page URL: cronalert.com/status/your-slug
• Monitors -- select which of your existing monitors should appear on the page. You can add or remove monitors later without affecting the monitors themselves

Once created, your status page is immediately live and publicly accessible at:

https://cronalert.com/status/your-slug

Share this link with your users, add it to your app's footer, include it in your documentation, or link to it from your support pages. Anyone can view it without logging in.

Setting up a custom domain (Pro and above)

The default cronalert.com/status/your-slug URL works fine, but if you want the status page to feel like part of your own brand, you can serve it from a custom domain like status.yourapp.com. This is available on Pro, Team, and Business plans.

To set it up:

1. Go to your status page settings and enter your custom domain (e.g., status.yourapp.com)
2. Add a CNAME record in your DNS provider pointing your subdomain to cronalert-status.pages.dev
3. Wait for DNS propagation (usually a few minutes, occasionally up to an hour)
4. CronAlert handles the SSL certificate automatically via Cloudflare

# DNS record to add
Type:  CNAME
Name:  status
Value: cronalert-status.pages.dev

Once the DNS record is active, visitors can reach your status page at https://status.yourapp.com and the CronAlert branding stays minimal.

What visitors see

Your status page is designed to answer one question as fast as possible: "Is the service working right now?" Here is what visitors encounter when they open the page.

At the top, a clear overall status indicator shows whether all systems are operational or if there are active issues. Below that, each monitor you added to the page is listed with its current state and a 90-day uptime bar -- a row of small colored segments, one per day, showing whether the service was fully up (green), partially down, or experienced an outage (red) on that day. Hovering over a day shows the exact uptime percentage.

If there is an active incident, it appears prominently at the top of the page with a timeline of updates. As you post updates through the CronAlert dashboard (or via the MCP server or API), they show up on the status page in real time. Once an incident is resolved, it moves to the recent incidents section where it remains visible for reference.

The page also exposes an Atom feed that visitors can subscribe to using any feed reader. This means your most engaged users -- the ones who actually want proactive notifications about outages -- can get them without you building a custom notification system.

Plan comparison

The status page feature is available on every plan. The main difference is how many pages you can create:

If you are running a single product, the free plan's one status page is likely all you need. Teams managing multiple products or brands -- say, a main app and a developer API with separate audiences -- will benefit from the Pro or Team plan's additional pages.

Frequently asked questions

Is the status page really free?

Yes. The free plan includes one public status page with no time limit and no watermark. You get 25 monitors with 3-minute check intervals, email/Slack/Discord/webhook alerts, and the Atom feed. No credit card required to sign up.

Can I use a custom domain on the free plan?

Custom domains are available starting on the Pro plan ($5/month or $4/month billed annually). On the free plan, your status page is served from cronalert.com/status/your-slug, which is still a clean, shareable URL.

What do visitors see on the page?

The current status of each monitor, 90-day uptime history visualized as daily bars, any active incidents with full update timelines, and recent resolved incidents. There is also an Atom feed link for subscribers who want to follow updates in a feed reader.

Can I control which monitors appear on the status page?

Absolutely. When creating or editing a status page, you pick exactly which monitors to include. This lets you keep internal monitors private while showing only the services your users interact with.

Wrapping up

A status page is one of those things that takes minutes to set up but pays for itself the first time something goes wrong. Instead of fielding "is it just me?" support emails, you point people to a single URL where they can see exactly what is happening.

CronAlert gives you that on the free plan: create an account, set up your monitors, build a status page, and share the link. If you need custom domains or multiple pages down the road, those are a plan upgrade away.

Sign up for free and have your status page live in the next five minutes.