Uptime Kuma: Self-Hosted Uptime Monitoring and Status Pages

Uptime Kuma is a self-hosted monitoring tool that checks whether your services are up and creates beautiful status pages. It's the open-source alternative to services like UptimeRobot, Pingdom, or Better Stack — with more features, better looks, and no monthly subscription.

Why Uptime Kuma?

Compared to hosted monitoring services:

• Free — No per-monitor pricing or plan limits
• Private — Your monitoring data stays on your server
• Flexible — More monitor types than most paid services
• Beautiful status pages — Public-facing pages to show your service health
• Self-contained — Single Docker container, no external dependencies

Compared to other self-hosted options (Gatus, Statping):

• Best UI — The most polished interface in the self-hosted monitoring space
• Active development — Regular releases with new features
• Large community — Well-documented, many guides available
• Status pages — Built-in public status pages (most alternatives lack this)

Installation

# docker-compose.yml
services:
  uptime-kuma:
    image: louislam/uptime-kuma:1
    container_name: uptime-kuma
    ports:
      - "3001:3001"
    volumes:
      - uptime_data:/app/data
    restart: unless-stopped

volumes:
  uptime_data:

docker compose up -d

Access at http://your-server:3001. Set up your admin account on first launch.

Monitor Types

HTTP(S)

The most common type. Sends an HTTP request and checks the response:

• Status code — Alert if response isn't 200 (or your expected code)
• Keyword — Check that the response body contains a specific string
• Response time — Track and alert on slow responses
• SSL certificate — Alert when your certificate is expiring (configurable days before expiry)

TCP Port

Checks if a TCP port is open. Useful for:

• Database servers (PostgreSQL 5432, MySQL 3306)
• SMTP servers (25, 587)
• Custom services that don't serve HTTP

Ping (ICMP)

Basic reachability check. Good for:

• Network devices (routers, switches)
• Servers where you only care about host-level availability
• WAN/ISP monitoring

DNS

Verifies DNS resolution:

• Check that a domain resolves to the expected IP
• Monitor DNS propagation after changes
• Detect DNS hijacking

Docker Container

Monitors Docker container status directly (requires Docker socket access):

volumes:
  - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro

Checks if a specific container is running. Faster than HTTP checks and works for services without a web interface.

Other Types

• gRPC — Monitor gRPC services
• MQTT — Monitor MQTT brokers
• SQL queries — Run a query and check results (MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server)
• Radius — Monitor RADIUS authentication servers
• Game servers — Steam, Minecraft, and other game protocols

Notification Channels

Uptime Kuma supports 90+ notification services:

Self-Hosted Friendly

• Gotify — Self-hosted push notifications
• ntfy — Self-hosted push notifications (pub/sub model)
• Matrix — Encrypted chat notifications
• Apprise — Meta-notification service

Popular Services

• Email (SMTP) — Direct email notifications
• Discord — Webhook notifications
• Slack — Webhook notifications
• Telegram — Bot notifications
• Pushover — Push notifications
• PagerDuty — Incident management

Webhook

Generic webhook support for custom integrations:

{
    "heartbeat": {
        "status": 0,
        "time": "2026-02-09 12:00:00",
        "msg": "Connection refused",
        "ping": null
    },
    "monitor": {
        "name": "My Service",
        "url": "https://myservice.example.com"
    }
}

Status Pages

Status pages are Uptime Kuma's standout feature. Create public-facing pages that show your services' current status and incident history.

Setting Up a Status Page

1. Go to Status Pages in the sidebar
2. Click New Status Page
3. Configure:
   • Title — "My Services Status"
   • Slug — URL path (/status/my-services)
   • Description — Optional description
   • Custom CSS — Brand your status page
4. Add monitor groups — organize services into logical sections
5. Publish — the page is accessible without login

Custom Domain

Put the status page behind a reverse proxy with a custom domain:

# Caddy
status.yourdomain.com {
    reverse_proxy uptime-kuma:3001
}

Incident Management

Post incidents directly on your status page:

1. Click Create Incident on the status page
2. Set the title, content (markdown), and style (info/warning/danger/primary)
3. The incident appears on the public status page
4. Update or resolve it as the situation changes

Maintenance Windows

Schedule maintenance to suppress false alerts:

1. Go to Maintenance in the sidebar
2. Create a maintenance window with:
   • Title — "Server updates"
   • Schedule — One-time or recurring (cron expression)
   • Duration — How long the maintenance lasts
   • Affected monitors — Which monitors to silence
3. During maintenance, affected monitors show "Maintenance" instead of "Down"
4. Status pages show the maintenance banner

Configuration Tips

Heartbeat Interval

Default is 60 seconds. Adjust based on your needs:

• Public-facing services — 30-60 seconds (quick detection)
• Internal services — 60-300 seconds (reduce noise)
• Network devices — 120-300 seconds (ping is cheap but frequent alerts are annoying)

Retry Logic

Configure retries before alerting:

• Retries — How many times to retry before marking as down (default: 1)
• Retry interval — Seconds between retries (default: 60)

Set retries to 2-3 for services that occasionally have brief hiccups. This reduces false alerts significantly.

Certificate Expiry Monitoring

For HTTPS monitors, enable certificate expiry notifications:

• Certificate expiry notification — Alert X days before SSL cert expires
• Default is 7 days, but 14-30 gives more time to act

Tags

Tag monitors for organization:

• location:homelab / location:vps
• type:web / type:database / type:network
• priority:critical / priority:low

Tags are visible in the dashboard and can be filtered.

Uptime Kuma vs Gatus vs Statping

Choose Uptime Kuma When

• You want the best-looking dashboard and status pages
• You need many notification options
• You prefer UI-based configuration
• You want maintenance windows and incident management

Choose Gatus When

• You prefer configuration as code (YAML)
• You want minimal resource usage
• You need simple, reliable checks without bells and whistles
• You're running in Kubernetes and want GitOps

Backup

Uptime Kuma stores everything in a SQLite database. To back up:

# Stop Kuma briefly for a consistent backup
docker compose stop uptime-kuma
cp /path/to/uptime_data/kuma.db /backup/kuma-$(date +%F).db
docker compose start uptime-kuma

Or use the built-in backup feature (Settings → Backup).

Verdict

Uptime Kuma is the best self-hosted uptime monitor available today. The UI is polished enough that non-technical users can understand the dashboard, the status pages look professional enough for customer-facing use, and the notification support covers every possible channel.

The only downside is that configuration is UI-only — you can't define monitors in a YAML file and deploy them with infrastructure-as-code. If that's important to you, look at Gatus. For everyone else, Uptime Kuma is the clear choice. Install it, add your services, set up a status page, and you'll wonder how you managed without it.