Email Subscriptions for Status Pages

Let visitors subscribe to your advanced status page and get notified by email when something happens. Customers learn about incidents the moment you declare them, instead of finding out from a broken integration.

Email subscriptions are available on every advanced status page. They use a double opt-in flow (confirmation link) and every email carries a one-click unsubscribe header, so the experience matches what mail clients expect.

What subscribers receive

Once a visitor confirms their subscription, they get an email when:

• An incident is created — title, impact, affected components, and the first update message.
• An incident gets a new update — your latest update message and the new status.
• An incident is resolved — duration and the final message.
• Maintenance is scheduled — title, window, and the components affected.
• Maintenance starts — when the window opens.
• Maintenance completes — when the window closes.

Each email includes a one-click unsubscribe link and the standard List-Unsubscribe headers, so Gmail / Apple Mail / Outlook show their native unsubscribe button. No subscriber should ever have to dig for the link.

Enable subscriptions

In the status page editor, open the Settings tab and turn on Let visitors subscribe to email updates. New subscriptions are accepted as soon as the toggle is on, and the Subscribe to updates button appears in the header of your public status page.

If you turn the toggle off later, the Subscribe button disappears immediately. Existing subscribers stay in the list but won't receive new emails until subscriptions are re-enabled.

How subscribers sign up

Visitors click Subscribe to updates on the public status page, enter their email, and get a confirmation link in their inbox. The link expires after 48 hours. They have to click it to start receiving updates — there is no admin override, no "add this email for me" flow. This keeps your sender reputation clean and your list compliant with anti-spam laws (CAN-SPAM, CASL, GDPR consent).

The same response is returned whether the email is new, already subscribed, or in the 5-minute cooldown window — Drumbeats never reveals subscriber state to a random visitor.

Manage subscribers

In the status page editor, the Subscribers tab shows:

• Counts — how many subscribers are Active, Pending (have not yet confirmed), and Unsubscribed.
• List — every subscriber with their email, status, and subscription date. Active subscribers are at the top.
• Remove — delete a subscriber. They'll have to resubscribe through the public page to receive emails again.
• Export CSV — download your-slug-subscribers.csv with email,status,created_at,verified_at for all active and pending subscribers. Useful for backups, support handoffs, or one-time migrations.

The list is paginated. Use Load more to see older entries.

Per-update control: "Notify subscribers"

Not every status-page change should trigger an email. When you declare an incident, post an update, or schedule maintenance, you'll see a Notify subscribers checkbox above the submit button. It's checked by default.

• Leave it checked for the normal case — your subscribers should hear about real incidents.
• Uncheck it for cosmetic edits, tests, or low-impact updates where an email would be noise.

The checkbox is hidden when subscriptions are off on the page (nothing to opt out of). On maintenance, the checkbox only appears when you create the window — editing a scheduled maintenance window never sends an email, because emails only fire on schedule / start / complete events.

What if a subscriber gets too many emails?

Every email contains:

1. A one-click unsubscribe link at the bottom.
2. A standard List-Unsubscribe header — Gmail, Apple Mail, and Outlook show their built-in unsubscribe button next to the sender name.

One click is enough; there is no confirmation page. The subscriber lands on a "you've been unsubscribed" page on status.drumbeats.io, even if they reached your status page via a custom domain. Unsubscribe links from emails always point at the canonical Drumbeats host.

Limits

• Confirmation link expiry: 48 hours. After that the visitor must resubscribe from the public page.
• Subscribe rate limit: 5 requests per minute per IP. A visitor who refreshes a confirmation page or types the form aggressively will hit a friendly "Too many attempts — try again in a minute" message.
• Resend cooldown: 5 minutes. If a visitor subscribes twice quickly, the second request is accepted silently — no duplicate email — and the first link is the one that counts.

Related guides

• Status Pages — overview of simple and advanced status pages.
• Custom Domains — serving your status page on status.acme.com. Confirmation and unsubscribe links always use the canonical Drumbeats host even when your page is on a custom domain.
• Incidents — how Drumbeats models incidents on the underlying monitors.