Upptime: An open-source uptime monitor for website and API uptime status

May 5, 2021

I’ve been on the hunt for a system to monitor and show our users the website and API’s uptime status – an important feature for any SaaS or API service.

I looked at StatusPage, which seems to be quite popular. However, it seems to require another system to do the actual monitoring like Pingdom, which can be expensive.

I came upon the open source project Upptime and the more I use it the more impressed I am. Upptime is an open–source uptime monitor and runs GitHub Actions to create the pages, do the monitoring, and update against the template. I’m personally excited about Actions since I’ve never used them before.

With Upptime I’m able to:

  • Monitor any URL or API endpoint. You can send a POST with API keys that are stored as GitHub secrets.
  • See a history of uptimes and response speeds. You can even drill down into the history details.
  • Brand the status page to match our site, which we have as a to-do.
  • Include Javascript or CSS, such as Google Analytics or Plausible (my fav).
  • Record errors as issues in GitHub that can be assigned and resolved.
  • Send email to users or support when issues occur. Sometimes a little tricky to setup, but works flawlessly once done.
  • Create custom domain (a feature of GitHub Pages and not Upptime).

It took a few tries to get up and running, but since the initial learning curve it has been running smoothly.

I’m sure there is a lot more to discover, but so far I’m quite pleased.

Here is our Ayrshare status page to see a live example: https://status.ayrshare.com/

Ayrshare Open-Source Uptime Monitoring