Uptime Kuma: monitor your sites and server

Uptime Kuma checks whether your websites, servers and certificates are working, and alerts you when something goes wrong. You manage it in your browser.

Each recipe builds on the working folder /srv/diensten with Caddy from Your working folder with compose.yaml, .env and Caddy. You add a service to compose.yaml, a block to the Caddyfile, and an A and AAAA record for the name (see A and AAAA records in My Domains).

1. DNS

Create an A and AAAA record for status.example.com pointing to your VPS.

2. compose.yaml

Add under services::

  uptime-kuma:
    image: louislam/uptime-kuma:2
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - uptime-kuma:/app/data

And under volumes: at the bottom:

  uptime-kuma:

3. Caddyfile

status.example.com {
	reverse_proxy uptime-kuma:3001
}

4. Start

anna@web1:/srv/diensten$ sudo docker compose up -d
anna@web1:/srv/diensten$ sudo docker compose exec -w /etc/caddy caddy caddy reload

Open https://status.example.com and create your admin account straight away, before someone else does.

5. What do you monitor?

In the notification settings, choose how you want to be alerted, for example by email via a mailbox on port 587 (see Reverse DNS and sending mail from your VPS) or with an app on your phone.

Please note: Uptime Kuma on your own VPS can't alert you if that VPS itself is down. So also have your VPS monitored from the outside, from another server or with an external service (see Monitoring from outside and inside).

Backups and updates

Everything is stored in the volume uptime-kuma; include it in your backup (see Backing up databases and Docker volumes properly). You update it as described in Updating containers, cleaning up and limiting logs.