# Getting started

ilert helps you both **coordinate** your response to an incident and **communicate** it to the people who depend on your services—while keeping the two clearly separated.

## Why it matters

* Bring your response team together in one place instead of coordinating across noisy alerts.
* Keep customers and stakeholders informed, building trust during an incident.
* Reduce incoming support requests by communicating proactively.
* Decide deliberately what to share publicly, and when.

## The building blocks

* [**Incidents**](/incidents-and-status-pages/incidents.md) are the coordination record for a significant event. Declare an incident to link alerts, page responders, track a timeline, and run the response to resolution.
* [**Status updates**](/incidents-and-status-pages/status-updates.md) are the public-facing messages you post about an incident. They appear on your [status pages](/incidents-and-status-pages/status-pages.md) and are also delivered directly to ilert users—such as those with the VIEWER role—who are subscribed to an affected service or status page.
* [**Services**](/incidents-and-status-pages/services.md) model the business capabilities your users care about. Incidents and status updates reference services, and users can subscribe to them for notifications.
* [**Status pages**](/incidents-and-status-pages/status-pages.md) are public or private pages that show the current status of your services and the history of status updates.
* [**Metrics**](/incidents-and-status-pages/metrics.md) show how well your services are performing on a status page. You can submit your own metrics data or import it from tools such as Datadog.

## How it fits together

An [alert](/alerting/working-with-alerts.md) pages your on-call responder. When the issue needs coordinated response, you [declare an incident](/incidents-and-status-pages/incidents/declare-an-incident.md)—the internal hub where your team works the problem. If the incident affects customers, you [post a status update](/incidents-and-status-pages/status-updates.md) to your [status pages](/incidents-and-status-pages/status-pages.md), keeping internal detail private and public communication deliberate.

{% hint style="info" %}
**Availability of incidents**

The [incident coordination](/incidents-and-status-pages/incidents.md) features are available for ilert accounts created after May 18, 2026, and are rolling out to existing accounts over the coming weeks and months. To opt in sooner, contact <support@ilert.com>. [Status updates](/incidents-and-status-pages/status-updates.md), services, and status pages are available to all accounts.
{% endhint %}


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