How To Self-Host Uptime Kuma for Server and Website Monitoring on Ubuntu

Uptime Kuma is a self-hosted, open-source monitoring tool with its own web dashboard. It polls the targets you configure — HTTP(S) endpoints, raw TCP ports, DNS records, ping, and more — on a schedule you set, keeps a history of response times and status changes, and fires a notification through email, Slack, Discord, Telegram, or one of its many other supported channels the moment something goes down. Because you run it yourself, there's no per-monitor pricing and no third party holding your uptime data.

This tutorial deploys Uptime Kuma with Docker Compose, walks through first-run setup, adds a monitor and a notification channel, and finishes by putting the dashboard behind Nginx with TLS so it's safe to leave running long-term.

Step 1 — Install Uptime Kuma with Docker Compose

Create a directory for the project and its Compose file. Keeping each self-hosted service in its own directory under /opt makes it easy to find, back up, and tear down later.

sudo mkdir -p /opt/uptime-kuma
cd /opt/uptime-kuma

Create docker-compose.yml with the following contents:

services:
  uptime-kuma:
    image: louislam/uptime-kuma:1
    volumes:
      - uptime_kuma_data:/app/data
    ports:
      - "3001:3001"
    restart: unless-stopped

volumes:
  uptime_kuma_data:

The image tag :1 pins to the 1.x release line, so `docker compose pull` later gives you patch and minor updates without an unannounced major-version jump. The named volume persists Uptime Kuma's internal SQLite database — monitors, history, users, notification settings — outside the container, so recreating the container never loses your data. The ports line publishes 3001 on every network interface on the host; that's needed for first-run setup, and you'll restrict it in Step 7 once Nginx is in front.

docker compose up -d
docker compose ps

Step 2 — Complete first-run setup

With the container running, visit http://<server-ip>:3001 in your browser, replacing <server-ip> with this server's public IP address. The first visit lands on an account creation screen. Choose a unique admin username and a strong, unique password — this is the only account gating your monitors and, later, any SMTP credentials or webhook URLs you add for notifications. Store it in a password manager; Uptime Kuma has no separate step you can skip and redo.