How to Improve Your Service Reliability with ilert Status Pages
According to the Uptime Institute, during the last year, the number of IT incidents slowly declined while the average cost of every incident grew. As dependency on digital services increases, the cost for ⅔ of all outages exceeds $100,000. Stakes are rising, and more and more companies are investing in proactive incident management.
Although incidents are unavoidable, organizations can still reduce recovery time, maintain operational stability, and build resilience against future disruptions. Proactive incident management, including the implementation of status pages, ensures that businesses can promptly address issues, provide transparent communication, and mitigate the impact on users.
At ilert, we are consistently enhancing our suite of incident communications features, with status pages being one of the key components. In this blog post, you will learn how to maximize the potential of your ilert status page and significantly enhance this aspect of your incident management.
What is a Status Page?
Just in case it's your first time you landed here. A status page is a trust-building tool. It provides real-time information about the operational status of a service or system as a whole, serving as a transparent communication channel between a company and its users during service disruptions.
If you are still determining if your company needs a status page, here are the main reasons ilert customers like IKEA have already implemented it.
- Transparency with customers. The historical data on your status page helps your potential clients evaluate your product and service. At the same time, keeping customers informed during incidents can mitigate the negative impact of service disruptions on the company’s reputation and customer satisfaction.
- To reduce support load. During an outage, a status page can significantly lower the number of support inquiries, as customers can get real-time updates without contacting support teams.
- Historical Data and reporting. Status pages include a history of past incidents and resolutions, which can help analyze patterns, improve service reliability and reporting to stakeholders.
- Compliance. Many industries require businesses to maintain logs of service availability and incident reports for compliance purposes. For example, ISO/IEC 27001, a standard for information security management systems, requires incident management processes. A status page can help meet these requirements by providing a clear communication channel during incidents.
- Accountability. Many businesses have SLAs that mandate timely communication about service status and incidents. A status page is a practical tool to fulfill these contractual obligations.
Automate Everything
Unlike other solutions that require manual updates or operate in isolation, ilert's status pages are built into your incident management platform. This tight integration allows teams to address issues swiftly and communicate effectively with stakeholders, thereby maintaining trust and reducing the impact of outages.
Update status pages automatically. Utilize alert actions to display a new status immediately when your monitoring tool sends an alert. You can trigger this action when the alert is sent to the platform or already accepted by the on-call engineer. Below are step-by-step instructions on how to enable this feature.
Delegate incident communication to AI. During an incident response, staying focused on resolving the problem is crucial. Crafting a clear and detailed update for the status page can be difficult, particularly in high-pressure situations. This is where ilert's AI-assisted incident communication proves invaluable. Use ilert AI to write clear, polite, and informative messaging for your status pages. ilert AI can automatically identify which services are affected, so you don't have to update them manually. Find more details in this article.
Easily notify about planned maintenance. Maintenance windows are scheduled periods when systems or services are offline for updates, upgrades, or repairs. Effective communication about these periods is vital to manage user expectations and minimize disruption. With ilert status pages, maintenance is automatically reflected, ensuring users are promptly informed about planned downtime. Here are the instructions on how to enable maintenance.
Status page that is always at hand. You don't have to manually send the status page link to your users and stakeholders. Embed ilert's floating status widget or status badge. The status page widget will appear only during ongoing incidents or scheduled maintenance and remain hidden when all services function normally. On the contrary, the status badge will always be visible.
Align Your Status Page with Your Brand
With ilert, you can customize the layout of your status page to align with your brand guidelines. You can add your logo, favicon, and create service groups to organize related services, making it easier for users to see the overall health of your system. Additionally, you can select your desired layout, such as single or responsive columns. The platform supports custom domains, ensuring your status page fits seamlessly with your web presence. Here is the guide for adjusting the status page according to your brand.
Configure Status Page Visibility
As you probably noticed on the ilert pricing page, there are several options for your status page. Depending on your needs and goals, you can make the page accessible for everyone or limit access by one of the following parameters:
- users with ilert accounts (including users with a stakeholder role)
- selected IP addresses or IP address ranges
- specific emails and email domains
Public status pages can be part of your SLA and provide insights into the service stability for all users on the internet. Private status pages are ideal for organizations that need to communicate service status updates to a specific group of users, such as internal teams or select customers. Private setup is beneficial for maintaining security and confidentiality, especially when dealing with sensitive operational data or managing communication for a high-value client base.
Subscription Flexibility
The status page widget is helpful, but users and stakeholders can also choose to receive notifications proactively. All ilert status pages, except for the Free plan, provide various options to keep everyone in the loop. Users can select between email, webhook, and RSS subscriptions by clicking a Subscribe button at the top right corner of the status page. Additionally, to follow GDPR rules, ilert will automatically send reminders to those who have chosen email notifications but didn't follow the double-opt-in link. Finally, to reduce complexity and provide only relevant updates, there is an option to subscribe to specific services only. You can manage your subscriber list using the status page settings.
