Incident communication: what to post on your status page

Post early

The first update matters most. As soon as you know something is wrong, post that you are investigating. Customers don't need the cause yet — they need to know you are on it.

A simple template

1. Investigating – "We're seeing errors on checkout and are looking into it."
2. Identified – "The cause is a failed database update. We're rolling it back."
3. Monitoring – "A fix is in place. We're watching to make sure it holds."
4. Resolved – "Everything is working normally. We're sorry for the trouble."

Keep a rhythm

Update every 30 minutes during a major outage, even if nothing changed. Silence feels worse than "still working on it".

Plan maintenance

Announce planned maintenance a few days ahead, with the start and end time in your customers' time zone, and let subscribers get an email.