I’ve used Uptime Kuma for three or whatever years. It has worked well in the background, but recently I decided to look into alternatives because I never really liked the complexity of configuring Kuma or the user interface if I’m being honest.

I didn’t have to look long to find the perfect replacement. Gatus is wonderfully simple, written in Go (which is obviously a positive), configured with a simple yaml file and stays out of the way until it needs my attention.

I didn’t have any huge issues with Uptime Kuma, I simply had some free time and wanted to improve my self-hosted stack in a little way. To list a few issues:

1. The dashboard isn’t easy to quickly scan because it opens the first entry by default and only shows all entries (ie the real overview) in a smaller list on the left.
2. I don’t look forward to having to configure a new monitor or doing any advanced configuration because it’s usually a headache because of how confusing it can be (loads of settings all packed into a small page). Which leads me to putting it off for ages (never doing it and having an old unmanaged config pretty much).
3. I don’t enjoy it.

Gatus addresses all of the issues I was having with Uptime Kuma.

1. The dashboard gives me everything I want, which is a quick overview of all the services I’m monitoring. Nothing else, just straight to real business, and If I ever want the full detailed view (rarely), I can still click into a single service to see that.
2. Quickly configuring the server with the yaml config file is a breeze, especially once it’s setup. It even reloads automatically.
3. I enjoy using and hosting Gatus.

If you use Uptime Kuma and or are looking for monitoring software, I highly recommend Gatus. I’m sure you don’t need a configuration guide because as I’ve said, It’s wonderfully simple, but I’ll leave you with a taste of how easy it is.

Using docker compose, you can set this simple file up:

services:
  gatus:
    image: twinproduction/gatus:v5.35.0
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
    volumes:
      - ./config:/config
      # Data volume only necessary if using persistent storage.
      - ./data:/data
    environment:
      # Pass credentials (etc) and use them in your config very easily!
      ALERT_AUTH: ${ALERT_AUTH}

And now for the Gatus config, you can see how simple it is to setup persistent storage with sqlite, a maintenence period and your first endpoint to monitor. The README is your friend!

storage:
  type: sqlite
  path: /data/data.db

alerting:
  custom:
    url: "https://my.custom.endpoint/for/monitoring"
    headers:
      Authorization: ${ALERT_AUTH}
      Content-Type: "application/json"
    method: "POST"
    body: |
      {
        "message": "[ALERT_TRIGGERED_OR_RESOLVED]: ([ENDPOINT_GROUP]) *[ENDPOINT_NAME]* - [ALERT_DESCRIPTION] - [RESULT_ERRORS]",
        "kind": "gatus"
      }
    default-alert:
      description: "health check failed"
      send-on-resolved: true
      failure-threshold: 2
      success-threshold: 1

maintenance:
  start: 05:00
  duration: 1h

endpoints:
  - name: Log
    group: media
    url: "https://log.sbond.co/"
    interval: 5m
    conditions:
      - "[STATUS] == 200"
      - "[CERTIFICATE_EXPIRATION] > 48h"
    alerts:
      - type: custom

I’m using a custom http request for my alerts, but if you are using one of the many first-party alerting providers, the Gatus README describes in detail how all them can be configured.

The templating of alerting messages is also a very nice feature.

I love a good README and Gatus doesn’t disappoint!

Project links:

• https://github.com/TwiN/gatus/
• https://gatus.io/