Someone else runs the monitor
With Kuma, you own the updates, the security patches, the backups and the uptime of the monitoring box itself. With us, that's our job — including the awkward question of what monitors the monitor.
247Monitor vs Uptime Kuma
Uptime Kuma is a free, open-source, self-hosted monitor — and it watches from exactly one place: your own server. If that server or its network hiccups, so does your monitoring. 247Monitor confirms outages from three continents and runs the infrastructure, so you don't have to.
Uptime Kuma is MIT-licensed, self-hosted, with 90+ notification integrations and zero per-monitor cost. For a homelab or internal services behind a firewall it has a place — your data stays yours and there's nothing to pay.
But it monitors from a single vantage point — wherever you host it — and that's the catch a hosted service exists to solve. A local network blip looks like an outage, there's no cross-region confirmation, and if your server goes down it can't tell you, because it went down with it. 247Monitor runs the infrastructure, checks from three continents, confirms failures before paging you, and adds what self-hosting can't easily give you: real-browser journeys, an SMS gateway, managed status pages and an SLA.
Side by side
The table, row by row.
Facts checked against Uptime Kuma's own pricing and documentation, June 2026. Rows where Uptime Kuma wins are marked too — comparisons you can't trust aren't comparisons.
| 247Monitor | Uptime Kuma | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | ·Paid plans (free tier available); we run it for you | ✓Free & open source — but you host and operate it |
| Who runs it | ✓Fully managed — updates, scaling & uptime are ours | ·You: provisioning, updates, security, backups |
| Monitoring vantage points | ✓3 continents, cross-region confirmation before alerting | ·One — wherever you host it |
| “Who watches the watcher?” | ✓If a region fails, others still check & confirm | ·If your server or network is down, monitoring is down too |
| Real-browser journeys | ✓Included from £9 — screenshots, console logs & traces | ·Not offered (no scripted Playwright journeys) |
| SMS & status-page hosting | ✓SMS credits + managed, CDN-served status pages | ·No built-in SMS gateway; status page self-hosted |
| Monitor types | —HTTP, keyword, ping, port, SSL, domain expiry, DNS, heartbeat, browser & server agent | —HTTP, keyword, TCP, ping, DNS, push, SSL, domain, Docker & more |
| Notifications | ·Email, Slack, Discord, Teams, Telegram, webhooks | ✓90+ integrations via Apprise |
| Team roles & billing | ✓Teams, seats, RBAC, audit log | ·Single-admin oriented; no built-in RBAC |
| Internal / LAN monitoring | ·Public internet + inbound heartbeats | ✓Can reach private/LAN targets directly |
| Support & SLA | ✓Managed support; SLA on higher plans | ·Community only — you're on-call for the monitor itself |
The case for switching
Why teams pick 247Monitor over Uptime Kuma
A failure gets confirmed, not assumed
A single vantage point can't tell a real outage from its own network blip. We check from three continents and confirm cross-region before we page you — the difference between a true alert and a 3am false alarm.
It can still alert when your server can't
If the box running Kuma loses power or network, it stops checking and stops alerting — silently. Our infrastructure isn't your infrastructure, so an outage on your side is exactly when we speak up.
Capabilities self-hosting can't easily add
Real-browser journeys with traces, an SMS gateway, managed status pages on a CDN, team roles and an audit log — all bundled. Reproducing those on a self-hosted stack is a project in itself.
FAQ
Switching questions
Is Uptime Kuma good enough on its own?
For homelabs and internal services, sometimes — it's free and self-hosted. But the limit is structural: it watches from one location and can't alert if its own host goes down. For anything customer-facing, monitoring from somewhere other than your own infrastructure is the whole point.
Can I run both?
Plenty of people do — Kuma for internal/LAN targets that never leave the network, 247Monitor for public-facing services that need multi-region confirmation, browser journeys, SMS and a managed status page. They complement each other neatly.
What does 247Monitor give me that self-hosting can't?
Independent vantage points with cross-region confirmation, infrastructure you don't maintain, real-browser journeys with full forensics, an SMS gateway, CDN-hosted status pages, team roles with an audit log, and support with an SLA — without you patching, backing up or babysitting the monitor.
Keep reading
More on monitoring, less on marketing
All 247Monitor features
Uptime checks, browser journeys, server-agent monitoring, status pages and alerting in one place.
ReadBest free uptime monitoring tools
How the genuinely-free tiers stack up in 2026 — limits and all.
ReadWhat is uptime monitoring?
The beginner's guide to what to watch and what “good” uptime means.
ReadWeighing other tools too? Browse all 247Monitor comparisons or check the pricing.
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