One person cannot watch forty servers. Uptime Kuma can. It checks your websites, servers and network devices every minute and messages you the moment one goes down — free, open source, and running on hardware you already own.
The video starts with a real problem: a user who had to keep an eye on around forty servers. Ping them by hand? Write a script and babysit the script? In the video, Technical Anshu solves it with Uptime Kuma — a free, self-hosted monitoring tool installed with Docker (the video uses a Synology NAS, and the same setup works on Linux, Windows with Docker, or any always-on PC). This guide follows the same path: install it, add your first monitors, connect alerts to your phone, and finish with a status page your users can check themselves.
👆 An example dashboard. Every row is one check that runs by itself, day and night — no human has to remember to ping anything.
Uptime Kuma is a free and open-source monitoring tool (the project lives on GitHub under the name louislam/uptime-kuma). You install it on your own machine — that is what self-hosted means — and it keeps checking whatever you tell it to check: websites, servers, routers, printers, cameras. When a check fails, it sends you an alert. When everything is fine, it quietly builds the uptime history you can later show a client or an ISP.
What you need is modest: one always-on machine with Docker on it. In the video that machine is a Synology NAS. An old office PC, a Raspberry Pi or a small cloud server works the same way, as long as it stays on and can reach the devices it watches. The dashboard opens in a browser on port 3001, for example http://192.168.1.50:3001 on your own network.
The full install is one small Docker Compose file and one command. Create a folder for Uptime Kuma, save the compose file inside it (the exact file, line by line, is on the Docker install page of this series), then start it:
docker-compose.yml filedocker compose up -d in that folderhttp://your-server-ip:3001 in a browserOn Synology, the same compose file runs through Container Manager, exactly as shown in the video. All your monitors and settings are stored inside the container's data volume, so updating later does not wipe your setup.
Click Add New Monitor and start with the three check types that cover almost every office:
The default check interval is 60 seconds, which is the right starting point for almost everything. Adding forty devices takes an afternoon of typing IP addresses — after that, the checking is automatic forever. Name each monitor clearly, like Office - FileServer - Ping, because that name is exactly what your 3 AM alert will say.
A dashboard nobody looks at does not monitor anything. Go to Settings → Notifications and connect at least one channel: Telegram (free, instant, on your phone), email, Discord, Slack or a generic webhook — Uptime Kuma supports dozens of services. Press the Test button, confirm the message arrives, then attach the notification to your monitors.
Also keep the retry setting sensible: with 2–3 retries before a monitor is marked down, one dropped packet does not wake you up, but a real failure still reaches you within a few minutes. Test the whole chain once on purpose — stop a test service, watch the alert land on your phone, then start it again and watch the recovery message. That one rehearsal is the difference between a monitoring system and a decoration.
Under Status Pages, create a page, choose the monitors the public should see, and share its link. Clients stop calling to ask “is the server down?” because they can see the answer themselves — and planned maintenance can be announced on the same page.
One honesty rule that matters: only publish monitors that are genuinely client-facing, and never hide a real outage by quietly removing a monitor from the page. A status page builds trust only while it tells the truth.
Watch the complete Uptime Kuma install in the video — Docker on Synology, the first monitors, notifications and the dashboard, all shown live.
▶️ Watch Full VideoYes. Uptime Kuma is free and open-source software — there is no per-device licence and no paid tier you must buy to unlock monitors. Your only cost is the machine it runs on, which for most offices is a NAS or an old PC that is already switched on.
It replaces the checking, not the fixing. Kuma will notice a dead server at 3 AM and tell you within minutes — something no manual routine can do — but a human still has to restart the service, replace the disk or call the ISP. Monitoring buys you early warning, not automatic repair.
Far more than a small office needs. Hundreds of simple ping and website checks at the default 60-second interval run comfortably on modest hardware like a Synology NAS. If checks start lagging, lengthen intervals on unimportant devices before blaming the tool.