Subscribe to a status page

Visitors subscribe from the Subscribe to updates button in the page header. Each subscription delivers the page’s incident and maintenance updates to one destination: an email address, a Slack channel, a Microsoft Teams channel, or a webhook endpoint. Subscribers can narrow the updates to the services they care about, and every message carries a link to change that or unsubscribe. This page covers the visitor flow first, then the operator settings.

​

Subscribe by email

If the confirmation email does not arrive, submit the same address again. While the subscription is still unconfirmed, Observer re-sends the original confirmation email, at most once every 10 minutes per address. The form always answers the same way, whether or not the address was already subscribed, so it cannot be used to find out who is subscribed.

​

Connect Slack or Microsoft Teams

Slack and Teams subscriptions post to a channel through an incoming webhook URL that the visitor creates in their own workspace. There is no confirmation email for Slack, Teams, or webhook subscriptions: accepting the test message is the proof that the destination is yours.

​

Connect a webhook

A webhook subscription POSTs signed JSON to an endpoint you run. Choose Webhook, enter an https:// URL, and click Connect webhook. As with Slack and Teams, Observer sends a test delivery (subscription.connected) and only creates the subscription if your endpoint answers 2xx within 10 seconds. On success the form shows the subscription’s signing secret (it starts with whsec_). It is shown once. Store it, then verify the X-Observer-Signature header on every delivery. The subscriber webhook reference documents the payloads, headers, and signature check.

​

URL rules

Every Slack, Teams, and webhook URL must:

• use https://;
• carry no username or password;
• resolve to a public address (private, loopback, and link-local addresses are refused);
• answer directly: redirects are not followed, so use the final URL.

These checks run when the URL is submitted and again on every delivery. Submitting a URL that is already connected to the page does not create a second subscription. Observer sends another test message (at most once every 10 minutes) that includes the link to manage the existing subscription. The signing secret is not shown again.

​

Choosing services

With All services, a subscriber receives every update published on the page. With Only selected, a subscriber receives:

• updates that list at least one of the selected services as affected;
• updates that list no affected services at all, since those concern the whole page;
• the resolve, completion, or cancellation of any update they already received, even if its affected services changed in the meantime. A subscriber who heard that something broke always hears that it was fixed.

The service list offered is the set of services with an SLO on one of the page’s metrics. Subscribers can change their selection later from the preferences page.

​

What subscribers receive

Subscribers are notified when an incident is published, when an update is posted on it, and when it is resolved, and when a maintenance window is published, is about to start, completes, or is canceled. Drafts never notify. The subscriber notification events reference lists every trigger. Every email, Slack message, Teams card, and webhook payload links to the update’s permalink (/incidents/<id>) and to the subscription’s preferences page.

​

Manage or unsubscribe

The Manage or unsubscribe link in every message (and the Manage subscription link shown after connecting) opens the subscription’s preferences page. The link is personal: anyone who has it can change the subscription. From there a subscriber can:

• change the services they follow and click Save preferences;
• click Unsubscribe (email) or Disconnect Slack, Disconnect Microsoft Teams, or Disconnect Webhook (channels). Disconnecting deletes the stored webhook URL and signing secret.

Unsubscribe links in emails open a confirmation page with an Unsubscribe button, so link scanners in mail gateways cannot unsubscribe someone by following the link. Subscriber emails also carry the standard List-Unsubscribe and List-Unsubscribe-Post headers, so mail clients that support one-click unsubscribe (such as Gmail and Apple Mail) remove the subscription in one step. To change a webhook’s signing secret, disconnect the subscription and connect the same URL again. The new subscription gets a new secret.

​

Operator settings

​

Turn subscriptions on or off

In the console, open the page in the page editor, go to Access, and use the Email subscriptions switch. Despite its label, the switch controls every channel: when it is off, the page shows no subscribe button and the subscribe endpoint accepts nothing. It is on by default. Turning it off does not remove existing subscribers.

​

Restricted pages

On a page that is not public, visitors can subscribe only after they pass the page’s access check. On a customer-scoped page opened with a signed link, the subscription is tied to that customer and receives that customer’s scoped incidents.

​

Subscriber limits

Your plan sets a subscriber limit for the whole organization, across all pages. Every active subscription counts once, whatever its channel: email (including unconfirmed addresses), Slack, Teams, and webhook. Unsubscribed and disconnected subscriptions do not count. When the organization is at its limit, your pages stop showing the subscribe button. A sign-up submitted at the limit (for example, from a form that was already open) is refused: the email form still shows its usual “check your inbox” message but sends nothing, and the Slack, Teams, and webhook forms show “Sign-up unavailable”. See pricing for each plan’s limit.

​

See who is subscribed

The page’s Subscribers view lists each subscription with its status (Confirmed, Unconfirmed, or unsubscribed), customer, and service filter count. Slack, Teams, and webhook subscriptions show as Slack channel, Teams channel, or Webhook; their URLs are never shown in the console. Export CSV downloads the list.