When your client's website goes down, two things happen: the site breaks, and the client panics. The second problem is often worse than the first.
A public status page gives clients and their users a real-time view of service health. When something goes wrong, they see it acknowledged and in-progress. When it's fine, they can self-serve that information instead of messaging you. It turns a reactive emergency into a managed incident.
Here's how to set one up.
What a Status Page Is (and Isn't)
A status page is a public URL — like status.yourclient.com — that shows:
- Which services are currently up or down
- Historical uptime percentage (30, 60, 90 days)
- Current incidents, with status updates
- Planned maintenance windows
It is not a replacement for alerting. You still need monitors that notify you immediately when something breaks. The status page is the customer-facing communication layer.
Companies like Cloudflare, GitHub, AWS, and Stripe all maintain public status pages. For a client's business, even a simple one communicates professionalism and transparency.
Creating a Status Page on ndelog
Every ndelog account — including the free Spark plan — includes a public status page.
Step 1: From the dashboard, go to Status Pages → + New Page.
Step 2: Give it a name and choose which monitors to display. You can show all monitors or select specific ones (e.g. show the production site but not the staging environment).
Step 3: Customize the page appearance — name, logo, and color scheme. Spark and Watchman pages are hosted on ndelog.com with ndelog branding. Warden adds custom domain support.
Step 4: Share the URL with your client and their users.
Adding a Custom Domain (Warden Plan)
On Warden ($7/mo), you can serve your status page on a domain you control:
status.clientsite.com
Setup:
- In ndelog, go to Status Pages → Settings → Custom Domain
- Enter
status.clientsite.com - ndelog gives you a CNAME record to add in your DNS manager
- Add the CNAME, wait for DNS propagation (usually under an hour)
- Your status page is now live at the custom domain
Each of your 3 Warden status pages can have its own custom domain — one per client.
White-Label Status Pages (Pamong Plan)
On Pamong ($39/mo), status pages are fully white-label: no ndelog branding, your agency name, unlimited pages with custom domains. For an agency managing 20+ clients, this means a professional status page for each client under their own brand.
Writing Good Incident Updates
The status page is only valuable if you update it during incidents. When something goes down:
- Immediately: Set the affected service to "Investigating." Clients see you know.
- After diagnosis: Update to "Identified" with a plain-language description of what's wrong. ("Database connection issue — our team is working on it.")
- During fix: Update to "Monitoring" once the fix is deployed, noting you're watching for stability.
- After resolution: Update to "Resolved" with a brief explanation.
Clients who can see this progression stay calm. Clients who get silence call you in a panic.
The ROI of a Status Page for Freelancers
Beyond client communication, a public status page is proof of professional infrastructure. When a potential client asks "how do you keep our site up?" pointing to a live status page with 99.9% uptime stats for your existing clients is a better answer than "I check regularly."
It's also a low-effort way to demonstrate ongoing value in a retainer agreement. The status page exists. It shows uptime. You're doing the work.