We also use StatusPage.io at my company, but it's hard not to be offended at how expensive it is when you start adding certain features. I've been tempted to make a spin-off for some time now.
You mention in that article that $29 is too high. But would you really need a status page for a service unless it was generating enough revenue to justify $29? A status page seems like a "oh now I have a critical mass of customers and need a way of sharing uptime" vs being something you need pre revenue or early revenue.
I believe so. At my workplace we use Cachet for our internal tools and applications - we wouldn't want to pay $29 a month for something internal like that.
There are a lot of people using Cachet in the same way as we do and even for services or business that are making money.
Does StatusPage do anything that this software doesn't? Just curious, because I was thinking about setting up some form of simple monitoring, but I haven't as of yet investigated any of the solutions in this space. (Forgive me for not checking their homepage; I'd honestly prefer some anecdotal opinion.)
If the two are on par feature-wise, I suppose it comes down to the cost savings of maintaining your own versus the time savings of outsourcing the problem to someone else. It might be nice just to forget about monitoring maintenance.
Considering statuspage.io is set up in redundant data centers and has all the bells and whistles that you need, building and maintaining your own seems less and less desirable to me.