Subscriber Notifications

Subscriber notifications let your users opt in to receive email updates about your service status. When an incident occurs or maintenance is scheduled, subscribers are notified automatically, reducing support load and building trust.

How It Works

The Subscriber Flow

1. A user visits your public status page
2. They click Subscribe to Updates
3. They enter their email address
4. They receive a confirmation email (double opt-in)
5. They click the confirmation link
6. They're now subscribed and will receive updates

Double Opt-In

Pingara uses double opt-in to ensure:

• Email addresses are valid
• The subscriber actually wants notifications
• Compliance with anti-spam regulations (CAN-SPAM, GDPR)

What Subscribers Receive

Incident Notifications

Subscribers are notified at key points in the incident lifecycle:

Example - Incident Created email:

Subject: ⚠️ Incident: API experiencing issues

We're currently investigating an issue with our API service.

Status: Investigating
Started: January 15, 2024 at 2:32 PM UTC
Affected: API

We'll provide updates as we learn more.

View status page: https://status.pingara.io/acme-corp

Example - Incident Resolved email:

Subject: ✅ Resolved: API is back to normal

The incident affecting our API service has been resolved.

Duration: 12 minutes
Resolved: January 15, 2024 at 2:44 PM UTC

Thank you for your patience.

View status page: https://status.pingara.io/acme-corp

Maintenance Notifications

When you schedule maintenance, subscribers receive advance notice:

Example - Maintenance Scheduled email:

Subject: 🔧 Scheduled Maintenance: Database Migration

We've scheduled maintenance for the following services:

Services: API, Website
Scheduled: January 20, 2024, 2:00 AM - 4:00 AM UTC
Expected Duration: 2 hours

During this time, some services may be temporarily unavailable.

View details: https://status.pingara.io/acme-corp

Enabling Subscriber Notifications

Step 1: Enable on Your Status Page

1. Go to Status Pages → [Your Page] → Settings
2. Toggle Allow Subscribers to enabled
3. Save

A "Subscribe to Updates" button will appear on your public status page.

Step 2: Customize (Optional)

Managing Subscribers

Viewing Subscribers

Go to Status Pages → [Your Page] → Subscribers to see:

• Email address
• Subscription date
• Confirmation status (pending or confirmed)
• Last notification sent

Removing Subscribers

Subscribers can unsubscribe at any time via the Unsubscribe link in every notification email. You can also manually remove a subscriber from the management page.

The links in subscriber emails (confirm, unsubscribe and manage) carry a token. When the page opens, Pingara removes the token, and for the manage page the subscriber's email address, from the browser's address bar, so neither stays in the browser history or a screenshot or reaches Google Analytics. A subscriber who reloads the confirm or unsubscribe page is told the token is missing and can open the link again from the email. Reloading the manage page returns to its email form, where they can request a new manage link.

Subscriber Limits

Notification Delivery

Email Delivery

Pingara sends subscriber notifications via a reliable email delivery infrastructure:

• From address: Pingara <hello@pingara.io>. Subscriber notifications go out on the transactional sender, not the alerts@pingara.io address your own team's incident alerts use. An operator can override it, so check with whoever runs your Pingara deployment if you're allowlisting.
• Reply-to: none is set, so replies go to the From address above
• Format: HTML email with plain text fallback
• Unsubscribe: a footer link in every email. There is no List-Unsubscribe header on subscriber notifications today, so a mail client's own one-click unsubscribe button won't appear.

Delivery Timing

• Incident Created - Sent within 60 seconds of incident creation
• Status Updates - Sent within 60 seconds of status change
• Incident Resolved - Sent within 60 seconds of resolution

Avoiding Spam Filters

To maximize delivery:

• Ask subscribers to add hello@pingara.io to their contacts
• Pingara uses SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication
• Emails follow best practices for formatting and content

Privacy and Compliance

Data Handling

• Subscriber emails are stored securely and encrypted at rest
• Email addresses are only used for status page notifications
• Subscriber data is never shared with third parties

GDPR Compliance

• Double opt-in ensures explicit consent
• Unsubscribe available in every email
• Subscribers can request data deletion

CAN-SPAM Compliance

• Clear identification of sender
• Physical mailing address included
• One-click unsubscribe mechanism
• No deceptive subject lines

Best Practices

Promote Your Status Page

Include your status page URL in:

• Your website footer
• API documentation
• Support ticket auto-responses
• Onboarding emails

Write Clear Incident Notes

When updating incident status, write notes that make sense to non-technical users:

Good: "We've identified the issue. A database connection limit was reached. We're scaling up capacity now."

Bad: "pg_pool exhausted, bumping max_connections from 100 to 200 in RDS parameter group."

Don't Over-Notify

Only send updates when there's meaningful new information. Subscribers will unsubscribe if they receive too many low-value updates.

Encourage Subscriptions

A status page is only useful if people know about it. Add a banner to your app that links to the status page during incidents.

Next Steps

• Creating Status Pages - Set up your first status page
• Understanding Incidents - How incidents trigger subscriber notifications
• Setting Up Alerts - Internal team alerts (separate from subscriber notifications)