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Serdar Tekin
Serdar Tekin

Posted on • Originally published at rafftechnologies.com

How to Deploy Uptime Kuma with Docker on Ubuntu 24.04

#selfhosted #cloud #tutorial #devops

Paying $20–50/month for Pingdom or UptimeRobot? Uptime Kuma does the same thing for free — on your own server, with unlimited monitors and zero per-seat pricing.

It's open-source, self-hosted, and takes about 10 minutes to deploy with Docker Compose. It supports 20+ monitor types (HTTP, TCP, Ping, DNS, Docker container health, push-based), sends alerts through 90+ notification providers, and lets you create public status pages. Version 2.0 added MariaDB support, rootless Docker images, and domain expiry monitoring.

Prerequisites

  • Ubuntu 24.04 VPS with at least 1 vCPU and 1 GB RAM
  • SSH access
  • Docker and Docker Compose installed

Step 1 — Create the Project Directory 

mkdir -p ~/uptime-kuma/data
cd ~/uptime-kuma
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The data directory stores Uptime Kuma's SQLite database — all monitors, alerts, and uptime history.

Step 2 — Create the Docker Compose File 

nano docker-compose.yml
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services:
  uptime-kuma:
    image: louislam/uptime-kuma:2
    container_name: uptime-kuma
    restart: always
    ports:
      - "3001:3001"
    volumes:
      - ./data:/app/data
    environment:
      - TZ=UTC
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  • louislam/uptime-kuma:2 — pinned to v2 to avoid breaking changes
  • restart: always — survives reboots and crashes
  • ./data:/app/data — persistent storage (without this, data is lost on recreate)

⚠️ Don't mount data on NFS — SQLite requires POSIX file locks, NFS causes corruption.

Step 3 — Start Uptime Kuma 

docker compose up -d
docker compose ps
docker compose logs -f
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Look for Listening on 3001. Ctrl+C to exit logs.

Step 4 — Configure the Firewall 

sudo ufw allow 3001/tcp
sudo ufw reload
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💡 Production tip: put Nginx in front as a reverse proxy with SSL. Change port mapping to 127.0.0.1:3001:3001 so only localhost can reach it.

Step 5 — Create Your Admin Account

Open http://your_server_ip:3001. Set language, username, and strong password.

⚠️ No email-based password recovery exists. Losing the admin password means resetting via the SQLite database directly.

Step 6 — Add Your First Monitor

Click Add New Monitor:

  • Type: HTTP(s) for websites
  • Name: "Company Website"
  • URL: https://example.com
  • Heartbeat: 60 seconds (30 for frequent checks)
  • Retries: 3 (avoids false positives)

Other monitor types: TCP Port, Ping, DNS, Docker Container, Push (for cron jobs).

Step 7 — Set Up Notifications

Settings → Notifications → Setup Notification:

  • Email: SMTP host, port 587/465, credentials, from/to addresses
  • Telegram: Bot token (via @botfather) + chat ID
  • Slack/Discord: Webhook URL

Click Test to verify, then Save. Apply to monitors via the Notifications section in each monitor's settings.

Step 8 — Update and Back Up 

cd ~/uptime-kuma
docker compose pull
docker compose up -d
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cp -r ~/uptime-kuma/data ~/uptime-kuma-backup-$(date +%Y%m%d)
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Schedule backups with a cron job.

What's Next

  • Add monitors for all your services
  • Create public status pages for clients
  • Set up Nginx + Let's Encrypt for HTTPS
  • Mount Docker socket to monitor containers on the same server
  • Set up multiple notification channels for redundancy

I'm Serdar, co-founder of Raff — affordable and reliable cloud infrastructure built to be the one platform your app needs — compute, storage, and beyond. Originally published on the Raff Technologies blog.

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