The hidden cost of “downtime” – and why most teams settle for expensive SaaS monitors

Every modern application depends on dozens of upstream services: APIs, databases, third‑party webhooks, and even DNS records. When any of those endpoints fail, users notice instantly, support tickets pile up, and revenue drops. Yet the tools most teams reach for—Pingdom, Datadog, New Relic—are proprietary, lock you into recurring fees, and often expose sensitive health data to third parties.

Enter Gatus, an open‑source health dashboard that puts you back in control. By running Gatus in your own environment (Docker, Kubernetes, or even a simple VM), you can monitor any service via HTTP, ICMP, TCP, or DNS, define granular conditions (status code, response time, certificate expiry, response body, etc.), and fire alerts to the collaboration tools you already use. No vendor lock‑in, no per‑endpoint charge, and full data privacy.

Why Choose Gatus?

• Protocol‑agnostic monitoring – Supports HTTP(s), ICMP ping, TCP socket checks, and DNS queries, covering the full spectrum of modern service health needs.
• Fine‑grained condition engine – Evaluate status codes, response times, TLS certificate expiration, JSON/YAML body content, and custom regexes, so you only get alerts when truly relevant.
• Rich alerting ecosystem – Native integrations with Slack, Microsoft Teams, PagerDuty, Discord, Twilio, Email, and dozens of other services let you route incidents where your ops team already works.
• Self‑hosted, zero‑cost – Deploy a single container, run it on your Kubernetes cluster, and avoid per‑endpoint licensing fees. Your health data never leaves your infrastructure.
• Kubernetes‑ready – Helm chart and Docker images make it trivial to run Gatus alongside the workloads you’re monitoring, with built‑in Prometheus metrics for deeper observability.
• Managed option available – If you prefer not to maintain the stack, Gatus.io offers a hosted service that mirrors the open‑source feature set.

Spotlight on Key Features

Getting Started

1. Run the official Docker image

docker run -p 8080:8080 --name gatus \
  twinproduction/gatus:stable

Or pull the OCI image from GitHub Container Registry:

docker run -p 8080:8080 --name gatus \
  ghcr.io/twin/gatus:stable

The container will start a web UI on http://localhost:8080. By default it looks for a config.yaml in the working directory; you can mount your own configuration file:

docker run -p 8080:8080 \
  -v $(pwd)/gatus-config.yaml:/config/config.yaml \
  --name gatus twinproduction/gatus:stable

2. Sample configuration

Create gatus-config.yaml with a simple HTTP check and Slack alert:

endpoints:
  - name: "API Health"
    url: "https://api.example.com/health"
    interval: 30s
    conditions:
      - "[STATUS] == 200"
      - "[RESPONSE_TIME] < 500"
    alerts:
      - type: slack
        url: "https://hooks.slack.com/services/XXXXX/XXXXX/XXXXX"

Restart the container, and you’ll see the “API Health” tile turn green when the endpoint meets both conditions, or a Slack message if it fails.

3. Deploy to Kubernetes (Helm)

Add the Helm repo and install:

helm repo add gatus https://gatus.io/helm-charts
helm repo update
helm install my-gatus gatus/gatus \
  --set config.enabled=true \
  --set config.file=$(cat gatus-config.yaml | base64)

The Helm chart automatically creates a Deployment, Service, and optionally a HorizontalPodAutoscaler. Enable Prometheus scraping with --set prometheus.enabled=true.

4. Explore the UI

Visit http://<your‑host>:8080 to:

• View live status of all endpoints.
• Drill into historical response‑time charts.
• Access the Alerts page to see recent notifications and retry logs.
• Export configuration via the UI for easy backup.

Comparison Table: Gatus vs. Proprietary Monitoring Services

While proprietary tools excel in turnkey UI polish and enterprise support, Gatus offers comparable protocol coverage, far richer condition logic, and complete control over where your monitoring data lives—all without a recurring license.

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Call to Action

Ready to reclaim full visibility over your services without paying per‑endpoint fees?

• Try it now – Deploy the Docker container in minutes and start monitoring your own endpoints.
• Explore the docs – Comprehensive guides, examples, and Helm charts are available on the official site.
• Join the community – Star the repository, open an issue, or start a discussion on GitHub to shape the next release.

Visit Gatus.io for documentation, live demos, and the managed offering.
Star the GitHub repo and consider sponsoring the project if you find it valuable.

By choosing Gatus, you gain a privacy‑first, cost‑effective, and extensible monitoring stack that scales with your infrastructure—no vendor lock‑in, no surprise bills, just reliable health data you control.