When your service goes down, the status page is where your users turn first.
But here’s the eternal question: should you self-host one, or use a hosted service?
Let’s unpack the pros, cons, and a few things most people don’t tell you.
🧱 The Self-Hosted Route
If you’re comfortable managing servers, you can run your own open-source status page.
Popular options include:
- Cachet - the OG of open-source status pages. Built with Laravel, it’s stable but somewhat dated.
- Statping-ng - a modern rewrite in Go with uptime checks built in, though development pace fluctuates.
- Upptime - GitHub-based; uses Actions + Pages to monitor and publish incidents automatically.
These projects give you full control, and they’re great for engineers who enjoy tweaking and maintaining things. But there’s a catch.
The good
✅ 100% control over data and design
✅ No recurring fees
✅ Can integrate deeply with your stack
The not-so-good
❌ You need to host and secure it yourself
❌ Updates, backups, and SSL renewals are on you
❌ Notifications and uptime checks often require extra setup
❌ Some projects are abandoned or hard to deploy
For small teams, the time investment can quickly outweigh the benefits.
☁️ The Hosted Services
If you’d rather spend time building your product than maintaining infrastructure, hosted solutions handle it all for you.
Some of the most widely used options:
- Atlassian Statuspage - powerful and enterprise-grade, but pricing grows quickly as you add subscribers, team members, or metrics. Lower tiers include basic branding and a small number of subscribers, while advanced customization and audience segmentation require higher plans. It’s primarily a communication platform - you usually integrate monitoring tools to feed data into it.
- Status.io - focuses on incident management, notifications, and subscriber handling. It’s flexible and polished, but its strength shows at scale, where pricing tiers (starting around $79/month) reflect that enterprise orientation.
- UptimeRobot Status Pages - simple and reliable, especially if you already use their monitoring service. Its status pages are straightforward but less customizable than those of dedicated platforms - ideal for smaller or internal projects.
The good
✅ No server management
✅ Fast setup - minutes, not hours
✅ Built-in incident notifications and metrics
✅ Reliable SSL, backups, and monitoring
The not-so-good
❌ Limited customization in lower tiers
❌ Costs rise as you grow (subscribers, components, teams)
❌ Your data and uptime depend on a third-party platform
⚖️ So, Which One Is Right for You?
| Criteria | Self-Hosted | Hosted |
|---|---|---|
| Setup time | Hours to days | Minutes |
| Maintenance | You handle it | Automatic |
| Customization | Full control | Depends on plan |
| Cost | Free (your time) | Subscription |
| Security | Your responsibility | Managed |
| Ideal for | Developers, OSS projects | SaaS teams, startups, IT orgs |
If you’re an open-source enthusiast, running something like Statping-ng might feel rewarding.
If you just want reliability, incident transparency, and uptime tracking - a hosted solution is the way to go.
🚀 A Balanced Approach (Without the Lock-In Drama)
That’s why we built HostedStatus.page - a hosted service that doesn’t trap you.
Yes, we’re technically a vendor. 😅
But we’re committed to never locking you in - all your data (monitors, components, component groups, sites, monitor check results, and more) can be exported anytime from
👉 hostedstatus.page/user/export.
Our self-hosted monitor (coming soon) even uses the same logging format as our own infrastructure monitors do - so everything stays compatible and portable.
Custom templates are also in the works, letting you bring your own front-end flavor without relying on any proprietary markup.
Think of it as the middle ground: a hosted platform with open, portable foundations and exit doors built in by design.
In short:
If you love self-hosting, great - there are solid OSS tools out there.
If you want something beautiful, reliable, and ready to go - try HostedStatus.page.
Tags: status page, uptime, self-hosted, saas, monitoring
