Instatus
Replaceable in one session with an AI coding agent.
A hosted status page. You publish incidents and maintenance windows, subscribers are notified by email, SMS or webhook, and the page is deliberately served from infrastructure that is not yours — so it stays up when your product does not.
Build me a status page as static files, hosted deliberately away from the service it reports on. STACK - Astro in static output, pushed to object storage or GitHub Pages - No server, no framework CONTENT - Components and incidents as Markdown files with front matter - A component has a name and a state: operational, degraded, partial outage, major outage - An incident has a title, severity, affected components and a chronological list of updates with UTC timestamps THE PAGE - Overall state, each component, and a 90-day uptime bar built from a checks file that a separate cron job appends to and commits - An incident history page and a permalink page per incident SUBSCRIBING WITHOUT AN ACCOUNT - RSS and Atom feeds, so people can follow without handing over an email address - /api/status.json as a static file, for programmatic checks and badges THE ONE DYNAMIC PART - A subscribe form posting to a tiny serverless function that stores addresses and sends on publication - It must fail safe: if it is down, the page itself is unaffected BUDGET - Under 20KB total, working with JavaScript disabled, legible in light and dark Include a README explaining in plain words why this must never be deployed to the same infrastructure as the product.
What you lose
- A status page hosted well away from your own infrastructure, which is the entire point of one
- Subscriber notifications by email, SMS and webhook at the exact moment your systems are struggling
- Fast page loads from a global edge, for the one page that gets hammered during an incident
- Incident templates and a workflow a stressed team can follow without thinking
- Automatic component status driven by existing monitoring integrations
If you would rather not build
- Statuspage — the incumbent, covered separately on this site
The escape hatch
open source · no votes, no paid placement
cState
$0Status page as a static site — incidents are Markdown files, hosted anywhere.
cstate/cstatefree · open source
Upptime
$0Uptime monitor and status page that runs entirely on GitHub Actions.
upptime/upptimefree · open source
Why this verdict
our own opinion · changed only by a person
90/100
Verdict yes at 90: a status page is Markdown plus a cron job, and static files on a different provider are genuinely more resilient than any dynamic app. At $99/mo for the Pro tier the arithmetic is not close; subscriber notification at scale is the only real reason to pay.
History
tracked since 6 Aug 2026 · nothing is ever overwritten
Nothing recorded yet. This chart fills in once the page has visitors, votes or prompt copies — it will not draw a flat line to look busy.
Questions about Instatus
answered from the record above
Is Instatus free?
No — the plan we track is $99 a month. Pro, $99/mo as listed on the pricing page. Business is $999/mo. A free tier exists for a basic public page.
Can you replace Instatus by building your own?
YES. Replaceable in one session with an AI coding agent. Replacement score 90 out of 100, build time one session. Read what you lose before you decide.
How much does Instatus cost?
$99 a month on Pro — $1,188 a year. Recorded 6 Aug 2026.
What do you lose by replacing Instatus?
A status page hosted well away from your own infrastructure, which is the entire point of one; Subscriber notifications by email, SMS and webhook at the exact moment your systems are struggling; Fast page loads from a global edge, for the one page that gets hammered during an incident; Incident templates and a workflow a stressed team can follow without thinking; Automatic component status driven by existing monitoring integrations. If any of those carry weight for you, keep paying.
Is there an open-source alternative to Instatus?
Yes: cState, Upptime. The prompt on this page is for when you want it your way instead.
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