A postmortem is a detailed report that explains what happened during an incident, why it happened, how it was resolved, and what steps are being taken to prevent it from happening again.
Postmortems are an important part of transparency and continuous improvement. While status page updates focus on real-time communication, postmortems provide deeper technical and operational context after an incident has been resolved.
Linking a Postmortem to an Incident
In Status.io, postmortems are linked to incidents using an external URL.
We recommend publishing your full postmortem on your own blog, documentation site, or knowledge base, then linking to it from the incident. This allows you to include richer content such as timelines, diagrams, charts, and long-form explanations that may not fit well directly on a status page.
To add a postmortem link:
- Open the incident you’d like to update.
- Click Add Postmortem Link.
- Enter the full URL to your published postmortem.
Once added, the link will appear on the incident so subscribers and visitors can easily access the full report.
Example Postmortem
For a strong real-world example of a clear and transparent postmortem, see this outage report published by Cloudflare: Cloudflare Outage – November 18, 2025 (Postmortem)
This postmortem is a great reference for structure and depth. It includes:
- A clear, plain-language summary of what happened
- A detailed timeline of events
- Root cause analysis
- Impacted services and customers
- Mitigation steps and follow-up actions
Using a format like this helps build trust with customers while also serving as valuable internal documentation.
Postmortem Best Practices
When writing a postmortem, we recommend:
- Being clear and factual – focus on what happened and why
- Including a timeline – from detection through full resolution
- Explaining customer impact – who was affected and how
- Documenting root cause and remediation
- Listing preventative actions – with concrete next steps
- Keeping it blameless – focus on systems and processes, not individuals
Well-written postmortems help your customers understand incidents and demonstrate your commitment to reliability and improvement.