Introduction to custom monitors and incidents
Custom monitors are manually controlled items that appear on your board and status page. Unlike automated checks, they rely entirely on you to create and manage incidents to reflect outage status.
Why use custom monitors?
- Monitor internal or non-automatable systems: Ideal for services like internal networks, Wi-Fi infrastructure, or hardware devices where automated checks aren't feasible.
- Communicate outages on your terms: Perfect for applications like SaaS platforms, e-commerce sites, or mobile apps—where automated alerts may distract or confuse customers. You decide when and how to post updates via your public status page.
- Flexible integration: In the future, custom monitors will support status updates sent via API from third-party tools.
Key concepts
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Subscriber | A team member or customer who signed up on your status page to receive notifications. |
| Incident | A manual event you create to report downtime, performance issues, or maintenance for custom monitors. |
| Incident update | Timeline entry within an incident—used to provide updates, status, or resolution. You choose whether to notify subscribers. |
| Phase | Indicates the incident’s current stage: Investigating, Identified, Monitoring, or Resolved. |
| Severity | Indicates the impact level on the service: Major, Minor, or Maintenance. |
| Monitor status | The current state assigned to each custom monitor: Up, Down, Warn, or Maint. |
How incidents and custom monitors work
- Custom monitors remain “Up” by default until you create an incident.
- When you create an incident, you manually set its severity, phase, and monitor status.
- Each new update within an incident can optionally notify your subscribers.
- The most recent incident phase and monitor status appear on your status page.
- You control the entire incident lifecycle — from opening to resolving it.