Kuma can't tell you when Kuma is down
That's the one thing it can't do. Kuma is good software: MIT licensed, more monitor types than we support, the widest notification list in the category. But it runs on a machine you own, inside the same failure domain as the things it watches, and when that machine goes quiet so does your monitoring.
Where Kuma is still the right answer
For plenty of setups self-hosting is the point, and we won't try to talk you out of it. If your checks can't leave your network, or you need TCP, ping, DNS or Docker monitors, or you want Discord alerts today, Kuma does those things and we don't. Dumza checks HTTP and HTTPS endpoints. That's the whole list.
We run the same checks from somewhere your infrastructure isn't, on a box you never have to patch.
Side by side
| Feature | Uptime Kuma | Dumza |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, plus whatever the server costs you | Free tier, paid from $7/mo |
| Who runs the server | You | We do |
| Setup | Docker or npm, then updates and volume backups | Sign up and paste a URL |
| Monitors | Unlimited, as many as your hardware holds | 10 free, 20 at $7, 100 at $19, 500 at $39 |
| Monitor types | HTTP, TCP, ping, DNS, Docker, push, databases, and more | HTTP and HTTPS only |
| Check interval | Yours to set, as fast as the box will take | 5 min on free, 1 min from $7 |
| Multi-region checks | Manual, run your own instances | Built-in |
| If the monitoring itself goes down | Nothing tells you | Gaps are recorded and shown as "worker offline", never counted against your uptime |
| Alert channels | 90+ providers through Apprise, each configured by hand | Email, webhook, Telegram, Slack, connected once per account. No Discord yet |
| Status page | Built in | Built in, with automatic incident history and subscriber email |
Last checked against Uptime Kuma 1.23 and 2.x, August 2026.
What comes across
In Kuma 1.23 the export lives under Settings → Backup → Export. Feed that .json to the import window and you get an editable preview before a single monitor is created. Version 2.x removed the backup screen, so on 2.x a monitor array pulled with uptime-kuma-api works too.
HTTP checks arrive with their name, URL and interval intact. An interval below your plan's floor gets raised rather than rejected, so a 20-second check lands as a 1-minute one instead of failing the whole file.
Anything we can't run is listed by name so you can see what stayed behind: TCP, ping, DNS, push and Docker monitors, requests using a method other than GET, HEAD or POST, and upside-down mode. Auth headers and request bodies don't come over either, because the backup is parsed in your browser and never uploaded to us. Those checks will arrive and fail until you re-enter the credentials.
Your plan's monitor limit still applies. Forty monitors into a free account gets you ten of them and a list of the other thirty.
Run both for a week
Nothing stops you leaving Kuma pointed at the same URLs while Dumza checks them from outside your network. If the two ever disagree about whether something is up, that disagreement is the interesting part. Free tier, no card.