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Posted on • Originally published at apistatuscheck.com

API Monitoring vs Status Pages: What's the Difference and Which Do You Need?

#devops #monitoring #api #webdev

Originally published on API Status Check

If you've ever Googled "Is Stripe down?" or set up Datadog alerts, you've encountered the difference between monitoring and status pages. But the terminology is confusing—"status monitoring," "uptime monitoring," "status pages," and "service health checks" all sound similar but mean different things.

This guide clarifies the differences and helps you choose the right tools.

The Three Categories: Monitoring, Status Pages, and Aggregators

1. Active Monitoring (Tools: Datadog, Pingdom, New Relic, UptimeRobot)

What it does: Continuously pings your services, APIs, or infrastructure to detect failures in real-time.

Key characteristics:

  • ✅ Proactive — alerts you when something breaks
  • ✅ Your own services — monitors what you control
  • ✅ Real-time alerts — sends notifications (Slack, PagerDuty, SMS)
  • ✅ Customizable checks — HTTP, ping, keyword, response time, etc.

Example use case: You run an e-commerce site. You set up Datadog to ping your checkout API every minute. If it returns a 500 error or times out, you get a Slack alert.

Popular tools:

  • Datadog — Full observability platform ($15-$23/host/mo)
  • Pingdom — Uptime + performance monitoring ($10-$214/mo)
  • New Relic — APM + infrastructure monitoring ($25-$750+/mo)
  • UptimeRobot — Simple uptime monitoring (free for 50 monitors)
  • Better Uptime — Modern monitoring + status pages ($18-$100+/mo)

2. Status Pages (Tools: StatusPage, Instatus, Sorry)

What it does: Displays the current operational status of your services, usually hosted on a public URL like status.yourcompany.com.

Key characteristics:

  • ✅ Informational — shows current status (operational, degraded, outage)
  • ✅ Customer-facing — reduces support load during incidents
  • ✅ Manual or automated — can be updated manually or via monitoring integrations
  • ✅ Incident history — logs past outages and resolutions

Example use case: You run a SaaS product. When your API goes down, you update your status page (status.yourproduct.com) to say "API - Major Outage" and post updates every 30 minutes. Customers check this instead of flooding support.

Popular tools:

  • Atlassian StatusPage — Industry standard ($29-$99+/mo)
  • Instatus — Beautiful, fast alternative ($16-$249/mo)
  • Sorry™ — Premium design-focused ($49-$249/mo)
  • Cachet — Open-source self-hosted (free)

3. Status Aggregators (Tools: API Status Check, Downdetector)

What it does: Collects and displays the operational status of third-party services and APIs you depend on.

Key characteristics:

  • ✅ Third-party focus — monitors services you don't control (Stripe, AWS, OpenAI)
  • ✅ Aggregated view — one dashboard for all your dependencies
  • ✅ No setup required — services are pre-configured
  • ✅ Read-only — you can't control these status pages, just read them

Example use case: Your app uses Stripe for payments, OpenAI for AI features, and Vercel for hosting. Instead of bookmarking 3 different status pages, you use API Status Check to see all three in one dashboard. When Stripe goes down, you get an alert.

Popular tools:

  • API Status Check — 100+ APIs for developers (free)
  • Downdetector — 1,000+ consumer services (free, ad-supported)
  • IsItDownRightNow — Simple service checker (free)

Visual Comparison: Monitoring vs Status Pages vs Aggregators

Feature Active Monitoring Status Pages Status Aggregators
Purpose Detect failures in your services Communicate status to your users Track third-party service status
Proactive? ✅ Yes (alerts you) ❌ No (informational) ⚠️ Partial (can alert on changes)
Who uses it? DevOps/SRE teams Everyone (customers, team) Developers/DevOps
What it tracks Your infrastructure Your services External dependencies
Setup required ✅ Yes (configure checks) ✅ Yes (design page) ❌ No (pre-configured)
Alerts ✅ Real-time ⚠️ Via subscriptions ✅ Optional
Examples Datadog, Pingdom StatusPage, Instatus API Status Check, Downdetector
Typical cost $10-$500+/mo $16-$99/mo Free or $9-$49/mo

When You Need Each Tool

You need Active Monitoring if:

  • ✅ You run a production service/API/website
  • ✅ You need to know immediately when something breaks
  • ✅ You want to track uptime, response times, errors
  • ✅ You're responsible for on-call/incident response
  • ✅ You have SLA commitments to customers

Recommended tools:

  • Small teams/startups: UptimeRobot (free) or Better Uptime ($18/mo)
  • Growing companies: Pingdom ($10-$53/mo)
  • Enterprises: Datadog ($15+/host) or New Relic ($25-$750/mo)

You need a Status Page if:

  • ✅ You have customers who use your product
  • ✅ You want to reduce support load during outages
  • ✅ You care about transparent communication
  • ✅ You're running a SaaS, API, or public-facing service
  • ✅ You want to build customer trust

Recommended tools:

  • Budget-conscious: Instatus ($16/mo)
  • Enterprise-grade: Atlassian StatusPage ($29-$99/mo)
  • Open-source: Cachet (free, self-hosted)

You need a Status Aggregator if:

  • ✅ You depend on third-party APIs (Stripe, AWS, Twilio, etc.)
  • ✅ You want one dashboard for all your dependencies
  • ✅ You're tired of checking 10 different status pages
  • ✅ You want alerts when external services go down
  • ✅ You're debugging production issues and need to rule out third-party failures

Recommended tools:

  • Developers/APIs: API Status Check (free)
  • Consumer services: Downdetector (free)

Real-World Scenarios: Which Tools Do You Need?

Scenario 1: Solo Developer Building a Side Project

Stack:

  • Monitoring: UptimeRobot (free) — monitors your app's uptime
  • Status aggregator: API Status Check (free) — tracks Stripe, OpenAI, etc.
  • Status page: Not needed yet (no paying customers)

Cost: $0/month

Scenario 2: Startup with Paying Customers

Stack:

  • Monitoring: Better Uptime ($18/mo) — monitors your API/site
  • Status page: Instatus ($16/mo) — customer-facing status page
  • Status aggregator: API Status Check (free) — tracks third-party APIs

Cost: $34/month

Scenario 3: Growing SaaS Company (Series A)

Stack:

  • Monitoring: Datadog ($200/mo) — full observability (APM, logs, infra)
  • Status page: Atlassian StatusPage ($99/mo) — enterprise-grade communication
  • Status aggregator: API Status Check (free) — dependency tracking

Cost: ~$300/month

Scenario 4: Enterprise with Complex Infrastructure

Stack:

  • Monitoring: New Relic or Datadog ($1,000+/mo) — distributed tracing, APM, RUM
  • Status page: StatusPage Enterprise (custom pricing) — multi-region, private pages
  • Status aggregator: API Status Check ($49/mo for custom alerts) — tracks 100+ dependencies

Cost: $1,500+/month

Can One Tool Do Everything?

Sort of. Some tools blur the lines:

Tools that do Monitoring + Status Pages:

  • Better Uptime — Monitors your services + generates a status page
  • UptimeRobot — Same (but more basic)
  • Pingdom — Includes status page features

Pros: One tool, one bill, easier setup

Cons: Status pages may be less customizable than dedicated tools

Tools that do Status Aggregation + Monitoring:

  • API Status Check — Aggregates third-party status + can monitor your own endpoints (paid plans)

Pros: One dashboard for internal + external dependencies

Cons: Not as feature-rich as Datadog for deep monitoring

The Ideal Stack for Most Teams

For small-to-medium teams (1-50 people), this is the sweet spot:

  1. UptimeRobot or Better Uptime ($0-$18/mo) → Monitor your own services
  2. Instatus or StatusPage ($16-$29/mo) → Customer-facing status page
  3. API Status Check (free) → Track third-party dependencies

Total cost: $16-$47/month for comprehensive coverage.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

❌ Mistake 1: Only using a status aggregator

Problem: API Status Check tells you when Stripe is down, but who monitors your API?

Solution: Add uptime monitoring (UptimeRobot or Pingdom).

❌ Mistake 2: No status page for customers

Problem: When your service breaks, users flood support with "Is it down?"

Solution: Host a public status page (Instatus or StatusPage).

❌ Mistake 3: Monitoring third-party services yourself

Problem: You set up Pingdom to ping status.stripe.com every minute (wastes money).

Solution: Use API Status Check—it already tracks Stripe's status for free.

❌ Mistake 4: Manual status page updates

Problem: During an outage, you forget to update your status page.

Solution: Integrate your monitoring tool (Datadog, Pingdom) with your status page (StatusPage, Instatus) for automatic updates.

Decision Matrix: What Do You Need?

Use this flowchart to decide:

Do you run a production service?
├─ YES → Need MONITORING (Datadog, Pingdom, UptimeRobot)
│   ├─ Do you have customers?
│   │   ├─ YES → Need STATUS PAGE (StatusPage, Instatus)
│   │   └─ NO → Status page optional
│   └─ Do you depend on third-party APIs?
│       ├─ YES → Need AGGREGATOR (API Status Check)
│       └─ NO → Aggregator optional
│
└─ NO (only using third-party services)
    └─ Need AGGREGATOR (API Status Check, Downdetector)
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FAQs

Do I need both monitoring and a status page?

Yes, if you have customers. Monitoring detects issues (internal tool for your team). Status pages communicate those issues (public tool for customers). They serve different audiences. Many tools (Better Uptime, UptimeRobot) bundle both, which is convenient for small teams.

Can I use API Status Check to monitor my own API?

Not yet—API Status Check currently focuses on tracking third-party APIs (Stripe, AWS, OpenAI, etc.). If you need to monitor your own infrastructure, use UptimeRobot (free), Pingdom ($10/mo), or Datadog ($15+/mo). However, API Status Check's paid plans may add custom endpoint monitoring in the future.

What's the difference between uptime monitoring and APM (Application Performance Monitoring)?

Uptime monitoring (Pingdom, UptimeRobot) checks if your service is up/down via simple HTTP pings. APM (Datadog, New Relic) goes deeper—tracking request traces, database queries, error rates, and performance bottlenecks. Uptime monitoring is simpler and cheaper; APM is comprehensive but more expensive. Most teams start with uptime monitoring and add APM as they scale.

Final Recommendations

Free Stack (Solo Developers):

  • Monitoring: UptimeRobot (free)
  • Status page: None (wait until you have customers)
  • Aggregator: API Status Check (free)

Total: $0/month

Startup Stack:

  • Monitoring: Better Uptime ($18/mo)
  • Status page: Instatus ($16/mo)
  • Aggregator: API Status Check (free)

Total: $34/month

Scale-Up Stack:

  • Monitoring: Datadog ($200+/mo)
  • Status page: Atlassian StatusPage ($99/mo)
  • Aggregator: API Status Check (free or $49/mo for advanced alerts)

Total: $300-$350/month

Conclusion

API monitoring and status pages aren't competitors—they're complementary tools that serve different purposes:

  • Monitoring is proactive (alerts you to failures)
  • Status pages are reactive (communicate status to users)
  • Aggregators track dependencies (third-party service status)

Most production teams need all three. Start small (UptimeRobot + API Status Check), then add a customer-facing status page (Instatus) when you have paying users. As you scale, upgrade to more robust monitoring (Datadog) and status page tools (StatusPage).

The right stack depends on your stage, budget, and needs—but you don't have to figure it out alone. Start with the free tools and level up as you grow.

Monitor 100+ APIs for free with API Status Check →

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