Public status page vs. internal alerting — which do I set up first?

Public status page vs. internal alerting — which do I set up first?

Q: Should my first investment be a status page or alert routing?

A: Alerting first, always. A status page that nobody updates during an incident is worse than none — it shows "all systems operational" while you're down, which destroys trust. The status page is an output; you need the alerting and incident process feeding it first.

Once alerting is solid, add the status page to cut support load. The two serve different audiences: alerts wake up your team, the status page calms your customers and stops the flood of "is it just me?" tickets.

The upgrade that pays off: wire the status page to update automatically from your monitor's state, so degraded components flip without a human remembering. Manual status pages drift out of date exactly when everyone's busy firefighting — which is the worst possible moment.

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