E-commerce Service Monitoring — Frequently Asked Questions
What is StatusBird?
StatusBird is a monitoring service built for e-commerce store owners. We watch 84 third-party services your store depends on — like Shopify, Stripe, Klaviyo, and ShipStation — and alert you the moment something goes down. You'll know before your customers do.
What services do you monitor?
We monitor 84 services across payments, shipping, marketing, analytics, customer support, and more. This includes Shopify, Stripe, PayPal, Klaviyo, Mailchimp, ShipStation, Zendesk, Google Analytics, and many others. You can browse the full list on our service status directory.
How does monitoring work?
StatusBird checks each service's official status page every 2 minutes, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. When we detect a change in status — like degraded performance or a full outage — we immediately send you an alert through your preferred channels.
How quickly will I be alerted?
Within 2 minutes of a status change. Our system polls every 2 minutes around the clock, and alerts are sent immediately upon detection. You can also configure smart alert thresholds and quiet hours to avoid unnecessary noise.
What alert channels do you support?
Pro subscribers get SMS text messages, email, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Discord alerts. You can enable as many channels as you like and configure each one in your settings. The free plan includes dashboard access only.
How much does StatusBird cost?
StatusBird has a free plan (3 services, dashboard access), Pro at $29/month (all 84 services, all alert channels, AI summaries, and more), Business at $49/month (adds revenue impact calculator and customer communications pack), and Enterprise (custom pricing — contact us). No hidden fees, no per-service charges.
Is there a free plan?
Yes. Sign up free — no credit card required. The free plan lets you monitor 3 services forever with dashboard access. Upgrade to Pro at any time for $29/mo to get all 84 services and instant alerts. You can sign up here.
Can I create a public status page for my store?
Yes, on the Pro plan. StatusBird lets you create a branded public status page that shows the real-time status of the services you monitor. Share it with your team, customers, or stakeholders so everyone stays informed.
Do you support Shopify apps?
Yes. StatusBird is available as a Shopify app. Install it directly from the Shopify App Store and it will automatically connect to your store. You can also use StatusBird independently without Shopify.
How is StatusBird different from StatusGator?
StatusBird is built specifically for e-commerce. We focus on the services that online stores actually use — payments, shipping, marketing tools, and platforms like Shopify. Our pricing is simpler ($29/mo Pro vs. $79/mo), we have a free plan (StatusGator doesn't), and we include SMS, Slack, Teams, and Discord alerts at no extra cost.
How do I cancel my subscription?
You can cancel anytime from your billing page. There are no cancellation fees or long-term contracts. Your account stays active until the end of your current billing period, then reverts to the free plan.
How do I contact support?
Email us at support@statusbird.io or call (929) 242-6958. You can also visit our contact page for our full mailing address.
What is third-party service monitoring?
Third-party service monitoring tracks the uptime and performance of external SaaS tools your business depends on — like Shopify, Stripe, Klaviyo, or ShipStation. Unlike traditional uptime monitoring (which checks if your own website is up), third-party monitoring tells you when a vendor's platform is down so you can respond before it impacts your customers.
How do I know if Shopify is down?
StatusBird checks Shopify's status every 2 minutes and shows the current status on our Shopify status page. Pro subscribers get an instant SMS or email alert the moment Shopify experiences an outage or degraded performance.
What happens to my store when Stripe goes down?
When Stripe goes down, customers cannot complete purchases on your store. Checkouts fail silently or show errors, leading to abandoned carts and lost revenue. StatusBird monitors Stripe 24/7 and alerts Pro subscribers within 2 minutes of any disruption so you can post a notice, pause ads, or contact support immediately.
Can I monitor multiple e-commerce platforms at once?
Yes. Pro subscribers can monitor all 84 services simultaneously — Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, every payment processor, shipping carrier, and marketing tool you use — all in one dashboard. The free plan covers 3 services.
What is the best uptime monitoring tool for online stores?
Most uptime monitoring tools are built for developers monitoring their own servers. StatusBird is built specifically for e-commerce store owners monitoring the third-party services they depend on. It covers the platforms, payment processors, shipping providers, and marketing tools that actually run your store — with no technical setup required.
Common concerns
I already check my vendors' status pages manually. Why do I need this?
Manually checking status pages requires you to remember to look — and to look at the right moment. Outages don't announce themselves. StatusBird checks every 2 minutes around the clock and alerts you the moment something changes, so you don't have to be watching to know.
My store is small. Does this really matter for me?
Outages hurt small stores proportionally more. A $50/hour store loses the same percentage of daily revenue as a $5,000/hour store during a 30-minute outage — but a large store has margin and staff to absorb it. Small stores feel every missed order. The free plan is genuinely free, so the risk to try it is zero.
Isn't this something Shopify should tell me about?
Shopify notifies you about issues on Shopify's infrastructure — but your store depends on dozens of other services: Stripe, Klaviyo, ShipStation, Meta Ads, Google, and more. None of those companies will text you when they go down. StatusBird watches all of them for you in one place.
I don't want more alerts clogging up my phone.
Fair concern. StatusBird sends one alert when something goes down and one when it recovers — that's it. You can set a severity threshold (for example, only alert me on major outages, not minor degradations), configure quiet hours, and choose which services to monitor. Most users get fewer than 5 alerts a month.
What if I don't have time to do anything when I get an alert?
Even knowing is valuable. If Stripe goes down and you're aware of it, you won't spend 20 minutes troubleshooting why your checkout is broken. You won't keep paying for ads sending people to a broken cart. And when a customer contacts you, you can give them an honest answer instead of saying "I'll look into it."
How is this different from just following @stripestatus on Twitter?
Twitter/X status accounts post updates manually and often lag behind the actual outage by 10-30 minutes. StatusBird polls directly from official status APIs every 2 minutes and sends a notification to your phone the moment a change is detected — no scrolling required. And we cover 80+ services, not just one.
$29/month seems like a lot for monitoring.
If your store does $5,000/month in revenue, a single 30-minute Stripe outage you don't catch in time costs roughly $35-70 in direct lost sales — before counting wasted ad spend and customer goodwill. One caught outage per month more than pays for itself. And the free plan covers 3 services at no cost, so you can start there.