Tool
Uptime Kuma
A self-hosted uptime monitor with a reactive UI, many check types, notification channels, and public status pages — the DIY answer when you do not want another SaaS bill for “is the site up?”
What it is
Uptime Kuma lives in louislam/uptime-kuma. People usually run it in Docker and point HTTP(S), TCP, ping, DNS, keyword, JSON-query, WebSocket, Docker, and other monitors at the things they care about. It draws ping charts, tracks certificate info, supports 2FA, and can publish status pages (including mapping a page to a specific domain). Notifications go out through Telegram, Discord, Slack, SMTP, and a long list of other services.
What it replaces
It replaces hosted uptime products like UptimeRobot or Better Stack for operators who want checks and status pages on hardware they control. It does not replace a second vantage point outside your network, on-call process, or the irony that the monitor host itself can die.
License
The louislam/uptime-kuma repository is licensed under the MIT License (verified from the project LICENSE). Notification providers and any SaaS you wire in still have their own terms.
Where it falls over
- You own the monitor host — if that box or its network path dies, silence is not “all green.”
- Notification misconfig (wrong token, muted channel, SMTP auth) means outages without alerts.
- Public status pages expose whatever you publish; treat them as intentional public surface.
- Same-network checks can miss upstream ISP/CDN failures that users see from elsewhere.
- SQLite/data volume lives with the container — backups and NFS caveats still apply (project warns against NFS).
Who it's for
Homelab and small-team operators who already run Docker (or Node), want MIT self-hosted monitoring with status pages, and will keep a second check path for the monitor itself. Wrong tool if you wanted zero-ops multi-region SaaS probes with a vendor SLA.
Related in this cluster
- Docker — how most people package Uptime Kuma
- Nginx Proxy Manager — TLS / reverse proxy in front of the UI or status page
- Tailscale — keep the admin UI off the public internet
- n8n — workflow automation adjacent to ops alerts
- Coolify — self-hosted PaaS that also needs monitoring
Verdict
Use Uptime Kuma when MIT self-hosted monitors and status pages beat another SaaS seat, and you will back up the data volume and watch the watcher. Skip it if you need multi-region third-party probes with a contract, not a container on your VPS.
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