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A status page is how you tell customers what is going on. The hard part is not the theme. It is whether the page is driven by a button someone remembers to press, by checks you own, or by measurement that is independent of both your deploy and the vendor's story.
Below are common approaches, named with familiar examples only as category anchors. Treat each example as a type of product, not a scorecard. Feature sets and pricing change; approaches are stable.
| Hosted status product | Self-hosted | Uptime-tool page | StackWitness | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Primary job | Customer incident communication | Same, under your infrastructure | Checks + public page together | Independent reachability + honest page |
| Who measures dependencies | Not the core product (you wire sources) | Whatever you connect | Your configured URL checks | Us, from outside your network (multi-region for dependencies) |
| Vendor self-report column | Usually not compared side by side | Only if you build it | Uncommon as a first-class pair | Read and shown next to our probe |
| Public page hosting | Vendor-hosted (often with your brand on their host; check them) | You host it | Product-hosted (check their docs) | Hosted for you, backed by independent measurement |
| False-green discipline | Process-dependent | Process-dependent | Depends on check design and product defaults | We only light red on evidence; no invented calm green |
Many teams combine: a communication-focused status product for narrative, plus an outside measurement tool for dependencies. That is coherent. One tool claiming to be everything often is not.
Internal links: all comparison guides · uptime monitoring alternatives · top status page options · live dependency truth · blog.
StackWitness is independent dependency and uptime monitoring with honest status pages. We measure the services you depend on ourselves, from multiple regions, and read the vendor's own status feed alongside, so when something breaks you know within minutes whether it is your provider or you. When our regions disagree, we show it as measured instead of averaging it into a comfortable green.
The paid product gives you your own monitors, clear attribution the moment a third party is the cause, and a customer-facing status page backed by that same measurement. It is the evidence you want in front of customers and your own team at 3am.
Start monitoring See live dependency truth
Public dependency truth pages are free to read. Paid product: your monitors, attribution, and a status page backed by the same measurement discipline. How StackWitness works · Blog.
Statuspage shows the states you push to it; it measures nothing on its own, so it stays green until someone updates it. StackWitness gives you status pages and incident management too, but backed by independent measurement: we probe the services you depend on ourselves, so your page reflects what is actually happening, not what someone remembered to post.
Yes. Public dependency truth pages at /status use the same measurement discipline. No account required to read them.
Start with evidence you can read. Public dependency truth pages use the same measurement discipline as the paid product.