At a Glance:
Checkmate is an open-source, self-hosted monitoring tool for tracking server hardware, uptime, response times, and incidents in real-time, with an optional Capture agent for CPU, RAM, and disk insights.
Overview:
Checkmate is an open-source, self-hosted uptime and infrastructure monitoring application. It regularly checks website and server accessibility and performance, providing real-time alerts and reports on availability, downtime, and response times. An optional agent called Capture can retrieve deeper hardware data, such as CPU, RAM, and disk temperature, from remote servers running Linux, Windows, Mac, or Raspberry Pi. The application has been stress-tested with over 1000 active monitors and is built to be deployable on personal devices or dedicated servers.
Key Decision Points:
Self-hosted deployment: The entire application is deployable on a user’s own servers or home devices like a Raspberry Pi 4 or 5.
Optional hardware monitoring agent: Deep infrastructure monitoring for metrics like memory, disk usage, and CPU requires installing the separate Capture agent, which is written in Go.
Incident and status page system: The tool includes an incident lifecycle management system, automatically creating or resolving incidents based on configurable status change thresholds, alongside customizable public status pages.
Core Features:
Multiple monitoring types: Supports uptime, Docker, ping, SSL, port, and game server monitoring.
Infrastructure monitoring: Tracks memory, disk usage, CPU performance, and network data via the Capture agent, with selective disk monitoring by mount point.
Incident management: Handles the automatic creation and resolution of incidents tied to monitor state changes like “up,” “down,” or “breached.”
Status pages: Provides public status pages with four selectable themes.
Diverse notification channels: Sends alerts via email, webhooks, Discord, Slack, PagerDuty, Matrix, Microsoft Teams, Telegram, Pushover, Twilio (SMS), and more.
Multi-language support: The interface supports 15+ languages including Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish.
Use Cases:
System administrators monitoring a fleet of servers who need a self-hosted uptime tracker with optional hardware-level insights.
Developers tracking the availability and SSL certificate status of multiple websites or APIs.
Users who want to create a public status page for their services without relying on a third-party SaaS provider.
Open-Source Alternative Value:
As a completely open-source tool, Checkmate can be deployed on a user’s own infrastructure, from small home devices like a Raspberry Pi to dedicated servers. The availability of its full source code and its self-hosted nature allows for direct data control and deployment without reliance on a proprietary monitoring service. The optional Capture agent further extends its value by providing hardware-level infrastructure insights on top of standard uptime checks, all within a single application.
