Custom Domains for Status Pages

Serve your advanced status page on a subdomain you own — e.g. status.acme.com instead of status.drumbeats.io/your-slug. TLS is provisioned and renewed automatically by Drumbeats; you only need to add one DNS record.

Availability

Custom domains are available on:

• Pro
• Business
• Enterprise

One custom subdomain per advanced status page.

Setup

Setup is a single CNAME record. The whole flow:

1. Open the advanced status page settings

In the Drumbeats dashboard, open the advanced status page you want a custom domain for, then go to Settings. Scroll to the Custom domain section.

2. Add the hostname

Type the subdomain you want to use — for example status.acme.com — and click Add domain.

The hostname is validated immediately. You'll see one of:

• A CNAME instruction (you've just registered, awaiting DNS)
• An error explaining what's wrong (apex domains aren't supported, hostname already claimed, etc.)

3. Add the CNAME at your DNS provider

Drumbeats will tell you the exact record to add. It looks like:

Type:   CNAME
Name:   status.acme.com
Value:  cname.drumbeats.io
TTL:    Default (or 300 seconds)

Type:   CNAME
Name:   status.acme.com
Value:  cname.drumbeats.io
TTL:    Default (or 300 seconds)

Add this record at your DNS provider (Cloudflare, AWS Route 53, GoDaddy, Namecheap, etc.).

If your domain is on Cloudflare, set the proxy to DNS only (grey cloud) for this record. Orange-cloud proxying interferes with Drumbeats' certificate validation.

4. Wait for activation

Once your CNAME resolves, Drumbeats validates ownership and provisions a TLS certificate. The dashboard updates automatically — usually within 1–5 minutes. You'll see:

• Verifying — DNS detected; cert issuance in progress
• Active — your status page is live on the custom domain
• Failed — something went wrong (see Troubleshooting)

Supported hostname formats

• Subdomains: status.acme.com, status.eu.acme.com, health.acme.com — anything that has at least three labels.
• Internationalised (IDN): stätus.acme.com is accepted and stored as the punycode form (xn--sttus-hra.acme.com).

Not supported (yet)

• Apex / root domains (acme.com) — most DNS providers don't allow CNAME at the root. Use a subdomain instead.
• Multiple domains per page — one custom domain per advanced status page.
• Bring your own TLS certificate — Drumbeats provisions and renews automatically.
• Wildcard hostnames (*.acme.com).

Troubleshooting

The settings panel shows a status-specific error message when something goes wrong. The common cases:

"Waiting for your DNS to point at us" (dns_no_records)

The CNAME record either hasn't been added yet, or it hasn't finished propagating. Wait a few minutes — DNS can take up to 24 hours globally but most providers update within 5–10 minutes.

You can verify the record yourself:

dig +short CNAME status.acme.com
# should output: cname.drumbeats.io.

dig +short CNAME status.acme.com
# should output: cname.drumbeats.io.

"DNS is pointing somewhere else" (dns_pointing_elsewhere)

Your hostname resolves, but not to cname.drumbeats.io. Common causes:

• A stale CNAME pointing to a previous status-page provider
• An A record with the same name overriding the CNAME (remove the A record)
• A Cloudflare proxy (orange cloud) — set the record to DNS only

"Certificate validation failed" (cert_validation_failed)

The CNAME points at us but TLS issuance failed. Most often this means the hostname is behind another CDN (Cloudflare proxied, Fastly, etc.) that's intercepting validation. Set the CNAME to direct/unproxied.

"Hostname is blocked" (hostname_blocked)

Cloudflare's hostname-block list rejected the registration. This is rare and usually applies to high-risk patterns. Contact support and we'll investigate.

Removing a custom domain

In the settings panel, click Remove. The status moves to removing, the CNAME and certificate are unregistered on our side, and the row clears within ~30 seconds. Your status page remains reachable at status.drumbeats.io/your-slug regardless.

You can also remove a custom domain by deleting the status page itself.

What happens on plan downgrade

If your project drops to the Free plan (manually or because a subscription ends), any active custom domains are automatically removed. You'll receive an email before the downgrade, and the status page reverts to the status.drumbeats.io/your-slug URL.

Behaviour notes

• The canonical URL still works. status.drumbeats.io/your-slug keeps working after a custom domain is active. Both URLs serve the same content. We don't 301 from canonical to custom.
• HSTS is enabled with a 1-year max-age on custom domains.
• X-Robots-Tag: noindex is respected per-page — the same noindex toggle in settings applies on both the canonical and custom URLs.
• RSS / Atom feeds at https://status.acme.com/feed.xml and /feed.atom work once the domain is active.
• Sitemap stays on the canonical host (status.drumbeats.io/sitemap.xml). Custom domains don't advertise a sitemap.