Uptime Robot is a solid choice, if you’re looking for a paid solution. Hetrixtools has a better free tier, and a solid alternative.
I settled for Uptime Kuma with Koyeb + iDrive. It’s a hassle, but a one-time hassle that will save me some bucks for, well, however long until the companies decide to terminate their free tier. So, yayy!!
Pikapods is an alternative for free Uptime Kuma, but only for a limited time. Quite hassle free though.
Uptime monitoring is an essential service for everyone with anything hosted on the internet. When what you’re hosting is entirely virtual, uptime monitors provide a sense of relief and security; you know things are fine and get alerted when they aren’t.
For the longest time, I relied on Uptime Robot, one of my favourite uptime monitoring services to date. However, Uptime Robot has increasingly restricted its free plan, and I felt it was high time that I actively started looking for an alternative.
Free Uptime Monitors are a dime a dozen on the internet, and there are great alternatives to Uptime Robot - like HetrixTools. However, the free tier is, well, free and pretty restrictive on all uptime monitoring services.
Also, since I laid eyes on Uptime Kuma, an open-source uptime monitoring tool, I haven’t been keen on other uptime monitoring tools. Uptime Kuma is absolutely beautiful and really lightweight, so I wanted to see if I could host Uptime Kuma for free to migrate my ten-something uptime monitors.
Here’s what I was looking for:
- Hosting Uptime Kuma should be free
- Everything should be manageable with a GUI
- No Credit Card required
- And optionally, hosted on my own domain.
And so, I began my search for an alternative to Uptime Robot. Whatever solution I found, it had to meet the few criterias: it needed to host Uptime Kuma for free, be manageable via GUI, and not require a credit card on file. Hosting Uptime Kuma on my own domain was optional; I could very easily set up a redirect.
If I could find a suitable option, great. Otherwise, I was going to migrate over to HetrixTools.
My search for free uptime Kuma hinged on finding a service that offered compute for free, without requiring a credit card on file. Since I don’t have a credit card and cannot access one either, Amazon’s AWS, Google’s GCP, and Oracle’s OCI were all out. With both a credit card requirement and a CLI access required, so was Fly.io.
The, sort of, alternative
Pikapods was one service that I found which offers free hosting for Uptime Kuma, though only for a limited time. They provide a $5 welcome credit, and with Uptime Kuma costing around $1.5/month, I could host it for around three months. Still, it was not what I was hoping for.
Koyeb + iDrive e2
Ultimately, I stumbled upon Koyeb and their Starter plan. The good news: Koyeb is probably the only serverless platform out there that doesn’t require a credit card on file.
The bad news: they have an aggressive abuse prevention system, meaning they ban people from the platform quite readily.
Also, Koyeb doesn’t allow Volumes or any form of persistent storage on its free tier, so some additional steps are needed - like using iDrive e2 for storage.
On the bright side, Koyeb seems serious about keeping the free tier for the foreseeable future, which is reassuring. [Koyeb’s article]
So, I signed up to Koyeb.
Koyeb’s aggressive abuse prevention caught me as well - I, too, fell under the ban hammer. However, writing a well-meaning email to one of their monitored addresses successfully lifted my ban. If the metaphorical ban hammer crashes down on you too, I suggest writing an email explaining your intended use case. In my case, I wrote that I wanted to use the free compute to host an Uptime Kuma instance.
Alternatively, you could also add a credit card to your account to avoid potential issues.
With the ban issue resolved, it was time to install Uptime Kuma. Fortunately Koyeb makes it quite simple. They have multiple different apps, called one-click apps, that makes it really convenient. Uptime Kuma is one of those one-click apps.
You can find Uptime Kuma under Services, by clicking ‘More one-click apps’.
Please note that you cannot use the default Uptime Kuma instance - you must use Koyeb’s one click app. It is discussed below.
Next, search for Uptime Kuma, and click ‘Deploy’.
Also, please be sure to select the Free Instance, as Koyeb will automatically choose a paid plan. You will need to manually switch to the free instance.
After clicking ‘Deploy’, Koyeb will bring up an menu - one that highlights a limitation of this process, and an additional hoop we need to jump through to get the app running.
In the Environment Variables section, you will see that seven variables are required. Clicking on the section shows variables with Litestream in their name.
The Uptime Kuma installation on Koyeb uses Litestream - or, in other words, requires an S3 compatible bucket. While Koyeb does provide storage through a feature they call Volumes, these Volumes cannot be attached to a Free Instance.
That's why only the Koyeb one-click app can be used. The Koyeb one-click app takes this limitation into account and utilizes Litestream to make Uptime Kuma work with any S3 compatible provider. Luckily, there are some providers that offer free S3 storage.
I chose iDrive e2. It’s quite easy to set up, and they offer a 10 GB free tier.
After you sign up, iDrive will prompt you to choose a region where your bucket - and your Uptime Kuma installation - will be stored. Since Koyeb only allows free instances to be hosted in Frankfurt and Washington DC, I recommend hosting your buckets in a region close to either Frankfurt or Washington DC.
In my case, I chose to host both my Koyeb instance, and the iDrive bucket in Frankfurt.
Next, create a bucket and give it a name. Keep it short and simple. I’m naming mine uptimekuma
.
Then, go to ‘Access Keys’ and click ‘Create Access Keys’ to create keys for your newly created Bucket. I named my key, UptimeKumaKey
.
You’ll then see the details of your access key in the bottom right corner. Please keep in mind that ‘Access Key ID’ and ‘Secret Access Key’ are sensitive information.
Now, you just need to plug in these values to your Koyeb instance as follows:
LITESTREAM_ACCESS_KEY_ID = PASTE ACCESS KEY ID FROM IDRIVE
LITESTREAM_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY = PASTE SECRET ACCESS KEY FROM IDRIVE
LITESTREAM_URL = PASTE THE ENDPOINT FROM IDRIVE
LITESTREAM_BUCKET = PASTE BUCKET NAME FROM IDRIVE
LITESTREAM_PATH = LEAVE AS IS
LITESTREAM_REGION = PASTE THE REGION FROM IDRIVE
Once all Environment Variables are filled in, click ‘Deploy’. It should only take a short while for Koyeb to build Uptime Kuma, and deploy it.
In the from Koyeb dashboard, you will see the public URL where your Uptime Kuma instance is hosted. Follow the URL and create a user account.
The Uptime Kuma instance is now fully installed. You can now add your own websites to be monitored. Happy monitoring!
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