Guide

A white-label status page beside the client report

Some clients want a link they can open without emailing you. Not the maintenance report. Just: is the site up, right now. That is a status page. It is smaller than the report, and it should stay smaller.

The report is where the work lives. The status page shows current state and the incidents from the last 14 days. It does not show the work log, your alert email, or the secret report URL. Visitors can leave an email. They confirm it first. Then one message when the site goes down, and one when it recovers. A site that flaps does not mail them on every probe.

Turn one on

You need an active subscription. Open the site and publish the public status page. You get a link on retainerproof.com, under /status/. Send that if a hostname on the client’s domain is more trouble than it is worth. Plenty of retainers stop here.

If they want status.client.com, add the hostname on the same site. A custom domain is not an Agency-only switch. Any paid plan can attach one. The app shows a CNAME target. On retainerproof.com that target is custom.retainerproof.com, unless this install uses a different name. Create the CNAME. Add a TXT record at _retainerproof-challenge plus the hostname, using the token shown in the app. Click Verify.

An unverified hostname is held for 72 hours, then another account can claim it. A verified one stays. Verification is a DNS lookup. It does not issue a certificate. The hostname still has to be attached where TLS is terminated, or the browser fails HTTPS even though the app would serve the page. Those steps are on the custom domain notes.

What white-label means here

Your studio name already leads the status page, and the client report, on every plan. Starter and Studio keep a small RetainerProof credit. Agency takes that credit off both. That is the white-label switch. It is not a separate product, and there is no per-page fee and no per-domain fee.

A status page comes with the site. Starter is 5 sites, Studio is 25, Agency is 100. An app pack is something else: up to three services on one status page, for an app you run rather than a client website. Studio includes one, Agency includes three, an extra pack is $5/month. A pack does not add a client site and does not produce a care report.

Checks run about every 15 minutes. The alert goes to you when a probe goes red. This is not a one-minute monitor. I would not sell the status page as one. The fuller story, certificate and domain and the work, stays on the report. That is the product described in website maintenance reporting for agencies. The uptime section on its own is the client website uptime report.

If you only wanted a status board

Hyperping prices status pages as a ladder. When I read their pricing page, the free plan had one basic status page and no custom domain, with 5-minute checks and 20 monitors. Essentials was $24 a month, or $290 a year, with one status page on your domain and no white label. Pro was $74 a month, or $890 a year, with 3 status pages. Business was $249 a month, or $2990 a year, with 10 status pages and white labeling. They also sell on-call, phone alerts, and server agents. I do not. If you need someone paged at 3am, buy that. Do not buy this and then be annoyed.

Pulsetic is the cheaper buy if a branded status board is the whole job. Their free plan listed 10 monitors, 5-minute checks, 3 status pages, and a custom domain. Solo was $9 a month, where unlimited status pages, customization, incident updates, and subscribers started. Team was $19 a month and removed their branding. White label was on Team and Organization, not Solo. Extra monitors were $0.20, teammates $8, subscribers a cent. They list maintenance windows. I do not have those, or an incident-update composer. Team at $19 beats Agency at $79 if you will never send a care report.

I am not going to flatten those products into this one. They check faster. They also charge, somewhere, for more pages or for taking their name off. Here the status page is tied to a site you already report on. The thing they are not selling is the monthly note of what you did.

Start a client website report, then publish the status page only if a client has actually asked for a public link.

Plans are Starter at $9/month for up to 5 sites, Studio at $29/month for up to 25 sites, and Agency at $79/month for up to 100 sites. Agency removes the RetainerProof credit on the client digest and the public status page. Prices are on the pricing page.

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