> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.statusstack.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Platform Overview

> Understanding the StatusStack platform architecture and features

## What is StatusStack?

StatusStack is a comprehensive status monitoring and management platform designed for MSPs, SaaS companies, and DevOps teams. It helps you monitor third-party services, track custom websites, organize monitoring into logical groups called **Stacks**, and keep your team informed through multi-channel notifications.

***

## Core Platform Components

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Stacks" icon="layer-group" href="/concepts/stacks">
    Logical groups of services for organized monitoring (Production, Staging, Client environments)
  </Card>

  <Card title="Sources" icon="globe" href="/concepts/sources">
    5,200+ pre-integrated sources (AWS, GitHub, Stripe, etc.)
  </Card>

  <Card title="Components" icon="puzzle-piece" href="/concepts/components">
    Individual services or APIs within a Source (e.g., AWS EC2, S3, Lambda)
  </Card>

  <Card title="Monitors" icon="chart-line" href="/concepts/monitors">
    Custom website and API monitoring with health checks
  </Card>

  <Card title="Notifications" icon="bell" href="/concepts/notifications">
    Multi-channel alerts via Slack, Discord, Teams, Email, and SMS
  </Card>

  <Card title="Teams & Organizations" icon="users" href="/concepts/teams-organizations">
    Multi-tenant architecture for MSPs and enterprises
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

***

## How StatusStack Works

```mermaid theme={null}
graph TB
    A[External Services] -->|Status Updates| B[StatusStack Platform]
    C[Your Websites] -->|Health Checks| B
    J[Custom Sources] -->|URL / Manual| B
    K[Community Reports] -->|Crowdsourced Detection| B
    B -->|Organize Into| D[Stacks]
    D -->|Monitor| E[Components]
    E -->|Detect Changes| F[Notification Engine]
    F -->|Alert Via| G[Slack/Discord/Teams/Email/SMS]
    D -->|Display On| H[Public Status Pages]
    B -->|Manage Via| I[Customer Dashboard]
    B -->|Generate| L[Scheduled Reports]
```

### The Monitoring Flow

1. **Data Collection**
   * StatusStack polls 5,200+ external status pages every 1-5 minutes
   * Custom sources extend monitoring to unlisted providers and internal services
   * Custom monitors check your websites and APIs at configured intervals
   * Crowdsourced reports aggregate community feedback for early incident detection
   * Status data is normalized and stored

2. **Organization into Stacks**
   * Group related services into logical Stacks
   * Each Stack has its own status page and monitoring view
   * Stacks can represent environments, clients, or service categories

3. **Status Change Detection**
   * Real-time detection of service degradations and outages
   * Historical tracking of all status changes
   * Incident creation and resolution tracking

4. **Notifications**
   * Rule-based routing to appropriate channels
   * Customizable alert levels (Info, Warning, Critical)
   * Enriched status emails with incident context, severity, and affected components
   * Rate limiting to prevent notification spam

5. **Public Status Pages**
   * Branded status pages for each Stack
   * Public visibility or password-protected
   * Email subscriptions for updates
   * Embeddable status widgets

***

## Key Features

### Multi-Source Monitoring

Monitor 5,200+ sources out of the box:

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="Cloud Providers">
    AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, and more
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Development Tools">
    GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, CircleCI, Travis CI, Jenkins, and more
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="SaaS Applications">
    Stripe, PayPal, Shopify, Salesforce, HubSpot, and more
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Infrastructure">
    Cloudflare, Fastly, MongoDB, Redis, Elasticsearch, and more
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Communication">
    Slack, Discord, Microsoft Teams, Twilio, SendGrid, and more
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>

### Custom Website Monitoring

Monitor your own websites and APIs:

* **HTTP/HTTPS Health Checks** - Ping endpoints at 30-second to 60-minute intervals
* **SSL Certificate Monitoring** - Track certificate expiry dates
* **Response Time Tracking** - Monitor performance trends
* **Custom Headers** - Authenticate with API keys or tokens
* **Expected Status Codes** - Define what "healthy" means for your endpoint
* **Alert Thresholds** - Configure failure thresholds before alerting

### Custom Sources

Monitor services not in the pre-built catalog:

* **URL-Based Sources** - Point to any status page URL and auto-detect the provider type (Statuspage.io, BetterStack, Instatus, and more)
* **Manual Sources** - Create sources for internal services without public status pages
* **Organization Scoped** - Custom sources are private to your organization
* **Per-Organization Limits** - Up to 10 custom sources per organization (configurable for Enterprise)

### Crowdsourced Incident Detection

Detect service issues before official status pages update:

* **Community Reports** - Aggregate user reports to identify emerging outages
* **Confidence Scoring** - Each detected incident is scored based on report volume and consistency
* **Early Warning** - Get notified about issues before the provider's own status page reflects them
* **Detection Lead Time** - Track how far ahead of official acknowledgment issues are detected

### Scheduled Reports

Automate recurring email reports for stakeholders:

* **Report Types** - Uptime, Incident Summary, and Usage reports
* **Flexible Scheduling** - Daily, weekly, or monthly delivery
* **Configurable Lookback** - 7 to 90 day data windows
* **Team Scoping** - Report on all teams or a specific team
* **Multiple Recipients** - Send to up to 25 email addresses per report

### Stack-Based Organization

Organize your monitoring into logical groups:

```
📦 Production Stack
  ├─ AWS (EC2, S3, RDS)
  ├─ Cloudflare CDN
  ├─ Stripe Payments
  ├─ SendGrid Email
  └─ Production API Monitor

📦 Staging Stack
  ├─ Staging API Monitor
  └─ Staging Database Monitor

📦 Client: Acme Corp
  ├─ Acme Website Monitor
  └─ Acme API Monitor
```

### Multi-Channel Notifications

Get notified where your team works:

| Channel             | Features                                | Setup Time |
| ------------------- | --------------------------------------- | ---------- |
| **Email**           | Instant delivery, rich HTML formatting  | 1 minute   |
| **Slack**           | Threaded conversations, inline actions  | 2 minutes  |
| **Discord**         | Server/channel targeting, rich embeds   | 2 minutes  |
| **Microsoft Teams** | Card-based messages, actionable buttons | 3 minutes  |
| **SMS**             | Text message alerts via Twilio          | 5 minutes  |
| **Webhooks**        | Custom integrations with any service    | 2 minutes  |

### Public Status Pages

Create branded status pages for customers:

* **Custom Domains** - Use your own domain (status.yourcompany.com)
* **Branding** - Custom logo, colors, and styling
* **Email Subscriptions** - Let users subscribe to updates
* **Incident History** - Display past incidents and resolutions
* **Password Protection** - Optionally require authentication
* **SEO Optimized** - Proper meta tags and structure

### MSP Features

Purpose-built for Managed Service Providers:

* **Multi-Client Management** - Separate Stacks and branding per client
* **Client Portals** - Dedicated status pages for each client
* **Flexible Billing** - Per-client pricing and usage tracking
* **White-Label Branding** - Customize for your MSP brand
* **Team Collaboration** - Role-based access for your staff

***

## Platform Architecture

### Multi-Tenancy

StatusStack uses a hierarchical multi-tenant architecture:

```
Organization (Your Company)
  ├── Teams (Development, Operations, MSP Clients)
  │     ├── Stacks (Production, Staging, Clients)
  │     ├── Monitors (Custom Websites)
  │     ├── Notification Rules
  │     └── Users (with Roles)
  └── Subscription & Billing
```

### Data Isolation

* All data is scoped to your Organization
* Teams provide additional segmentation
* Role-based access control (Admin, Member, Viewer)
* Secure API authentication via tokens

### Performance

* **Sub-minute Updates** - Status changes detected within 1-5 minutes
* **High Availability** - 99.9% uptime SLA
* **Global CDN** - Fast status page delivery worldwide
* **Scalable Architecture** - Handles thousands of components per organization

***

## Security & Privacy

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="Authentication">
    * OAuth 2.0 (Google, Microsoft)
    * Email/Password with 2FA support
    * SAML 2.0 for enterprise SSO
    * API token-based authentication
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Data Protection">
    * End-to-end encryption in transit (TLS 1.2+)
    * Encrypted data at rest
    * Regular security audits
    * GDPR compliant
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Access Control">
    * Organization-level isolation
    * Role-based permissions
    * Team-based access control
    * Audit logs for all actions
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>

***

## Pricing & Plans

StatusStack offers flexible pricing for teams of all sizes:

<CardGroup cols={3}>
  <Card title="Free" icon="gift">
    **\$0/month**

    * 1 Stack
    * 10 Components
    * 1 Custom Monitor
    * Email Notifications
    * Community Support
  </Card>

  <Card title="Pro" icon="rocket">
    **\$29/month**

    * 10 Stacks
    * Unlimited Components
    * 25 Custom Monitors
    * All Notification Channels
    * Priority Support
  </Card>

  <Card title="Enterprise" icon="building">
    **Custom Pricing**

    * Unlimited Everything
    * Custom Integrations
    * Dedicated Support
    * SLA Guarantees
    * Custom Contracts
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

<Note>
  **MSP Pricing**: Special per-client pricing available for Managed Service Providers. [Contact Sales](mailto:sales@statusstack.com) for details.
</Note>

***

## Getting Started

<Steps>
  <Step title="Sign Up">
    Create your account at [statusstack.com/register](https://statusstack.com/register)
  </Step>

  <Step title="Create a Stack">
    Organize your monitoring into logical Stacks
  </Step>

  <Step title="Add Services">
    Add third-party services or custom monitors
  </Step>

  <Step title="Set Up Notifications">
    Configure alerts to your preferred channels
  </Step>

  <Step title="Share Status Page">
    Publish your Stack's status page for customers
  </Step>
</Steps>

***

## Next Steps

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Quickstart Guide" icon="rocket" href="/quickstart">
    Set up your first Stack in 5 minutes
  </Card>

  <Card title="Core Concepts" icon="book" href="/concepts/stacks">
    Learn about Stacks, Sources, and Components
  </Card>

  <Card title="Dashboard Guide" icon="gauge" href="/guides/customer-dashboard">
    Master the customer dashboard
  </Card>

  <Card title="MSP Setup" icon="building" href="/guides/msp-setup">
    Configure multi-client monitoring
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

***

## Support & Resources

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Documentation" icon="book-open" href="/">
    Comprehensive guides and tutorials
  </Card>

  <Card title="Community Forum" icon="users" href="https://statusstack.com/community">
    Get help from other users
  </Card>

  <Card title="Email Support" icon="envelope" href="mailto:support@statusstack.com">
    Contact our support team
  </Card>

  <Card title="System Status" icon="signal" href="https://status.statusstack.com">
    Check StatusStack's status
  </Card>
</CardGroup>