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Let customers subscribe to status updates

Customers subscribe on the public status page and confirm the email Atender sends them. As an admin you manage the subscribers, export the list, and choose the sender address.

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Let customers subscribe to status updates

When an update is posted on a Public incident, subscribers get an email. That’s the mechanism by which customers learn about issues without manually refreshing the status page. This article covers what you, as the tenant admin, need to do — which is mostly: send people to the public status page and let them subscribe themselves.

Before you start

  • Customers can subscribe to incidents at any time, even before any incident exists. There’s no minimum.
  • Decide which “from” address subscriber emails should use. Without setup, emails come from incidents@ on your workspace’s own email domain: your oldest verified custom domain, or else the domain your workspace got at sign-up. Subscriber mail needs at least one verified email domain.

Steps

Go to Settings → Incidents → General. Find the Subscriber email sender dropdown. Choose:

  • Own address — replies are not received — emails are sent from an address on one of your verified email domains. Type the part before the @ (it is incidents when left empty) and pick the domain; the line below shows the full address (Sends as …). Customers cannot reply to this address: their replies are dropped. If you have no verified email domain, the page says subscriber mail is not sent until you add one. See Add an email domain.
  • One of your email channels — emails are sent from that channel’s address (e.g., status@yourcompany.com), and replies arrive in that channel’s inbox. Only channels whose sending domain is active are listed.

Click Save settings. The change applies to all future subscriber emails immediately.

2. Point customers at the public status page

The page lives at https://prod.atender.dev/incidents/<your-slug> or your custom domain (see Connect a custom domain).

How customers find it:

  • Link it from your support footer, help center, and product navigation.
  • Mention it in your first response to “is the site down?” inquiries.
  • Embed the status widget on your main site so the URL is one click away.

3. Customers self-subscribe

On the public page, customers click Subscribe to Updates. They:

  1. Enter their email address.
  2. Choose Subscribe to all incidents (every Public incident, including new ones) or Subscribe to specific incidents only and pick from the active and planned incidents listed on the status page.
  3. Click Subscribe.

The page then shows Check your inbox. Atender sends the address one email with the subject “Confirm your status updates”. The email uses the frame you set in Settings → Service messages, in the language of your workspace.

To start the updates, the customer:

  1. Opens the confirmation link in the email. The link is valid for 7 days and works one time.
  2. Presses the button on the page that opens. Opening the link alone does not confirm, so a mail scanner cannot confirm for somebody.

Until the customer confirms, the address gets no incident updates. If nobody confirms in 7 days, Atender removes the address. The page shows the same Check your inbox answer for a new, a pending and a subscribed address, so the page never tells a visitor who is subscribed.

The same confirmation email goes out when an Agent Stack subscribes a customer during a chat.

4. Manage existing subscribers

Go to Settings → Incidents → Subscribers. You see:

  • Total subscribers — every address in the list, confirmed or not
  • Each subscriber’s email, with a Not confirmed badge when the person has not confirmed the email yet
  • The scope they’re subscribed to (“All events” or a list of specific incident titles)
  • When they subscribed
  • A trash icon to delete the subscriber

The Subscribers number on the Incidents overview counts confirmed subscribers only. A Not confirmed address gets no updates until the person confirms.

You can’t add a subscriber from here — sign-ups on the status page are self-service to keep consent clear. You can remove subscribers (e.g., bounced addresses, abuse cases).

Two other paths add a subscriber that is confirmed at once, with no confirmation email:

  • The public API. The holder of the API key vouches for the consent of each address it adds. In the API, a sign-up from the status page shows verified: false until the person confirms.
  • A conversation. When your team links a conversation to an incident and subscribes the customer, the customer is subscribed at once.

5. Export the subscriber list

Click Export List in the top-right of the Subscribers tab. Atender generates a CSV with email, confirmed (Yes or No), scope, and subscribe-at timestamps. Useful for compliance reviews or for one-off announcements outside the status page.

Verify it worked

  1. Open the public page in an incognito tab.
  2. Click Subscribe to Updates and enter a test email you control.
  3. Confirm the page shows Check your inbox.
  4. In Settings → Incidents → Subscribers, the new subscriber appears with the right scope, a fresh timestamp and the Not confirmed badge.
  5. Open the email, open the confirmation link, and press the button. The badge goes away.
  6. (Optional) Create a test Public incident, post an update on it, and confirm the subscriber receives the notification email from the sender address you configured.

Unsubscribing

Every subscriber email includes an unsubscribe link. Only this link unsubscribes an address: nobody can unsubscribe somebody else by typing their address on the status page. Atender honors unsubscribe immediately and silently — there’s no second step, no retention. Once unsubscribed, the subscriber can re-subscribe on the status page, and confirms the new email again.

Troubleshooting

  • Symptom: Subscribers aren’t receiving the notification email. Fix: Check spam folders first. Then check that your workspace has a verified email domain (Settings → Email — domain status should be Active): with no verified domain, subscriber mail is not sent. Channels with a non-active domain are hidden from the Subscriber email sender dropdown, and if the channel you picked becomes inactive later, emails go from your own address instead until it is active again.
  • Symptom: A customer subscribed but gets no updates, and the address shows Not confirmed. Fix: The customer did not confirm. Ask them to find the “Confirm your status updates” email (check spam), open the link and press the button. If the link is older than 7 days or was used already, they subscribe again on the status page to get a new email.
  • Symptom: Subscriber says they’re getting too many emails. Fix: They might be subscribed to “All events” instead of specific Public incidents. Subscribing again on the status page does not change a confirmed subscription. To narrow the scope, they unsubscribe with the link in an update email, then subscribe again with the narrower scope and confirm the new email.
  • Symptom: Subscribers aren’t getting incident updates. Fix: Each posted update on a Public incident sends an email to subscribers of that incident. If you posted an update but no email arrived, check that the incident is Public and visible on the status page. Then check Settings → Incidents → Subscribers — the subscriber may have been deleted, or the incident-scope subscription may not match.

See also

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