You ship a deploy. A migration runs. A service restarts. Everything is expected.
And then: your phone explodes.
- DOWN alerts
- Recovery alerts
- Slack noise
- “Is production on fire?” messages
- Customers refreshing the app with no explanation
Planned work shouldn’t look like an incident. The fix is simple: use scheduled maintenance windows—and communicate them clearly.
In this post, you’ll learn how to plan and announce maintenance, how to prevent alert storms, what to put on your status page, and a checklist you can reuse every time.
What a Maintenance Window Actually Does (and Why It Matters)
A maintenance window is a defined time range where you expect disruption—deployments, infrastructure work, database migrations, DNS changes, or third‑party upgrades.
A good maintenance window helps you:
- Reduce alert fatigue by avoiding “cry wolf” notifications
- Keep customers informed so disruption feels controlled (not chaotic)
- Protect your on-call from unnecessary wakeups
- Create a clean timeline when something does go wrong
- Build trust through transparency
If you’ve ever missed a real incident because you were drowning in expected downtime alerts, you already know why this matters.
Related reading: Alert Fatigue: Notifications That Get Acted On
Maintenance vs Incident: The Key Difference
They can look similar from the outside (things may be slow or unavailable), but they’re not the same:
| Event | Expected? | Customer messaging | Internal response |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maintenance | Yes | “Planned work; partial disruption possible” | Execute runbook, verify, complete |
| Incident | No | “Unplanned disruption; investigating” | Triage, mitigate, escalate |
The goal is to ensure your monitoring and communications reflect reality: planned work should be labeled as planned.
When You Should Schedule Maintenance (Common Cases)
Schedule a maintenance window anytime you might trigger downtime, degraded performance, or noisy checks:
- Database migrations (locks, restarts, schema changes)
- Deployments with rolling restarts
- CDN/cache invalidations that can spike latency
- Load balancer / firewall / WAF changes
- DNS and certificate changes (especially if propagation is involved)
- Third-party provider migrations (email, payments, auth)
Rule of thumb: if you’re thinking “this might flap,” schedule maintenance.
What to Communicate (So Customers Don’t Panic)
Your status page message should answer four questions quickly:
- What’s happening? (plain language)
- When? (start/end time, with timezone)
- Who’s affected? (which components/services)
- What’s the expected impact? (downtime vs degraded performance)
Example (copy/paste)
Title: Database Migration Body: We’re performing planned database maintenance from 02:00–03:00 UTC. During this time you may experience brief login issues and slower dashboards. We’ll post updates here when complete.
Keep it honest and specific. Vague posts (“maintenance tonight”) create more support tickets, not fewer.
How to Run Maintenance Without Alert Storms
A strong workflow looks like this:
1) Schedule it ahead of time
Even 30 minutes is better than “surprise.”
2) Mark the affected monitors
Only select monitors that might flap. Don’t silence everything unless you truly must.
3) Notify subscribers (if you have a status page)
Let customers opt in to maintenance updates.
4) Execute the runbook
Keep internal notes: what changed, timestamps, who’s on point.
5) Verify critical paths before completion
Don’t end maintenance because the deploy finished. End it when the product is stable.
6) Complete the maintenance window
This closes the loop publicly and internally.
Using Webalert for Scheduled Maintenance (Practical Setup)
Webalert supports scheduled maintenance windows tied to specific monitors, with automation and status page integration:
- Select affected monitors so maintenance is scoped (no global silence)
- Auto-start / auto-complete so the window runs on schedule
- Subscriber notifications (scheduled, started, completed) for status pages
A simple pattern:
- Auto-start: on
- Auto-complete: on
- Notify subscribers: on
- Pick only the monitors that will be touched
If you also want a customer-facing communication layer, set up a public status page and let users subscribe to updates.
Related reading: How to Build a Status Page That Improves Customer Trust
Don’t Hide Everything: Keep Monitoring Useful During Maintenance
A common mistake is silencing all monitoring and flying blind.
Instead:
- Keep monitoring active for unrelated systems (payments, auth, public site)
- Keep at least one external canary if possible (e.g., homepage uptime)
- Treat maintenance as “controlled risk,” not “no visibility”
If something unexpected happens, you want evidence—response times, check history, and incident timelines—without the noise.
The Maintenance Checklist (Use This Every Time)
Before (24h to 30m)
- Write a one‑sentence “what/when/impact” status page note
- Identify affected services and monitors
- Schedule maintenance window (start/end, monitors, notifications)
- Confirm rollback plan and owner
- Lower risk: ship small changes earlier where possible
During
- Post a “started” update (even if automated)
- Track timestamps for major steps (migration start/end, deploy start/end)
- Watch key monitors and error signals
- If impact exceeds expectations, treat it like an incident and say so
After
- Verify critical user flows (login, checkout, core API endpoints)
- Complete the maintenance window (close the loop)
- Document what changed + what you’d do differently next time
- If anything went wrong, write a short postmortem
Related reading: Incident Post-Mortem Template: A Practical Guide
Common Pitfalls (and How to Avoid Them)
“We scheduled it, but alerts still fired”
Make sure the maintenance is linked to the correct monitors (the ones that will flap). If you’re touching multiple endpoints, include them.
“We forgot to end the maintenance”
Use auto-complete when possible, but still verify stability before completion. Long “stuck” maintenance windows reduce trust.
“Customers were surprised anyway”
Scheduling isn’t enough—your message needs impact and timing. If customers don’t know what will break, they assume the worst.
“Maintenance turned into an incident”
It happens. The right move is to switch to incident mode: investigate, update frequently, and communicate clearly.
Final Thoughts
Your monitoring system should tell the truth.
If something is planned, label it as planned. Reduce noise for your team, keep customers in the loop, and create a clean operational rhythm: schedule → execute → verify → complete.
Maintenance windows aren’t just an ops feature—they’re a trust feature.
Ready to run maintenance without alert storms?
Start monitoring for free with Webalert →
Scheduled maintenance windows, multi-channel notifications, and public status pages—built for calm, reliable operations.