# 4 Copy-Pastable Incident Templates for Status Pages

When an [incident](https://betterstack.com/community/guides/incident-management/what-is-incident-management/) happens it's often necessary to
share more information than just a simple red and green icon with an up/down
status on your [status page](https://betterstack.com/community/guides/incident-management/what-is-status-page/).

More insights generally help users to accommodate for the interruption and
remove the need for any follow-up questions. But crafting a well-written
incident update in the heat of a service outage is challenging. Incident
communication templates save you stress and hassle.

[note]
<p>📌&nbsp; To learn about details of status updates on <a href="https://betterstack.com/better-uptime/status-page">Better Uptime status pages</a>, please visit <a href="https://docs.betteruptime.com/" target="_blank">Better Uptime docs</a>.</p>[/note]

## Ready to use status page templates

Here are status page templates to consider for different use cases. Feel free to
use them as they are or adjust them so they fit your specific use case.

### Scheduled maintenance

Use this when you want to tell your users and customers to prepare for planned
maintenance such as a database migration.

Note that the key to effective communication of maintenance is to let people
know early. This can mean 3 days or several weeks depending on the scale of the
maintenance and importance of your service.

**Announcement message**

[Your company name] will be performing routine maintenance on June 10 starting
at 14:00 (UTC+1). You may not be able to access [company website] for a short
period of time, but we’ll have things back up and running as soon as possible to
minimize disruption to you.

**In progress message**

Scheduled maintenance is currently in progress. We will provide updates as
necessary.

**Completed message**

The scheduled maintenance has been completed. Thank you for your patience!

### Minor incident

Use this in case of an incident, where a small feature is not working correctly
or where a small amount of users is impacted.

**Investigating message**

We’re having some trouble with [service affected]. We’re working to fix the
problem as quickly as we can. We’ll share another update shortly.

_Alternatively, you can provide a specific timeframe like 10 or 30 minutes - but
be cautious as users might take your word for it._

**Resolved message**

We’re back! [service affected] should be up and running. Thanks for bearing with
us.

### Major incident

Use this in case of an incident, where a key feature is not working correctly or
where a large amount of users is impacted.

**Investigating message**

We’re investigating an issue with [service affected] that is impacting some
users. We’re working to fix the problem as quickly as we can. We’ll share
another update shortly.

**Resolved message**

We’re back! [service affected] should be up and running. Thanks for bearing with
us.

### Complete downtime

Use this in case of an incident, where the whole service is down or when all of
your users are impacted.

**Investigating message**

[service] is down for most users. We’re working to fix the problem as quickly as
we can. We’ll share another update shortly.

**Resolved message**

We’re back! [service affected] should be up and running. Thanks for bearing with
us.

## Learn from the best

Want to know how the best companies communicate downtime? Check out some [great
examples of status pages](https://betterstack.com/community/guides/incident-management/status-page-examples/) and explore specific historical
outages and how they were communicated.