What Made Cachet Great (And What Changed)
Cachet was a pioneer. When it launched, it was one of the first genuinely good open source status page tools. Built on PHP and Laravel, it gave teams a self-hosted status page they could deploy on their own infrastructure, customize to match their brand, and manage without paying a monthly subscription.
For years, it was the default answer to "I need a free status page." The project racked up 14,000+ GitHub stars, had an active community, and offered a clean interface that rivaled hosted alternatives. Component-based status tracking, incident management, subscriber notifications via email, metric graphs — Cachet checked most of the boxes.
Then development slowed. And then it mostly stopped.
The last meaningful release was years ago. Pull requests sit unmerged. Issues pile up without responses. The Laravel version Cachet depends on is several major versions behind. An unmaintained PHP application sitting on the public internet is a security risk — unpatched dependencies, outdated encryption libraries, known vulnerabilities that never get fixed.
Cachet was great. But "it still runs" is not the same as "it is safe and supported." If you are running Cachet today, you are carrying technical debt that grows every month. This post covers seven alternatives — both self-hosted and hosted — so you can find a replacement that fits how your team actually operates.
What to Look for in a Cachet Alternative
Active maintenance. This is the reason you are leaving Cachet. Check the GitHub commit history before committing to a new tool.
Easy setup and low operational burden. Cachet required a PHP runtime, a database, a web server, and queue workers. Some teams want that control. Others want to stop managing status page infrastructure entirely.
Subscriber notifications. Cachet let you collect email subscribers and notify them during incidents. Your replacement should match this — email, webhook, RSS, or SMS.
Custom branding. A status page is customer-facing. You need custom domains, logos, and brand colors. Cachet was strong here. Do not downgrade.
Integrations with your monitoring stack. A status page that requires manual updates during an outage is a status page that does not get updated. Look for tools that automatically reflect monitor status or accept webhook triggers.
7 Best Cachet Alternatives
1. Uptime Kuma (Free, Self-Hosted)
Uptime Kuma is the natural successor to Cachet for teams that want a self-hosted, open source status page. It has 60,000+ GitHub stars and a very active community.
Where it wins:
- Active development. Regular releases and a large contributor community. The opposite of Cachet's situation.
- Built-in monitoring. HTTP, TCP, DNS, Docker containers, and more — reflected automatically on your public status page. No manual incident updates needed.
- 90+ notification channels. Slack, Discord, Teams, Telegram, email, Pushover, webhooks, and dozens more.
- Simple deployment. A single Docker container. No PHP runtime, no queue workers, no separate database.
Where it falls short:
- Single-user by design. No team features, role-based access, or multi-user collaboration.
- No incident management workflow. No escalation policies, on-call scheduling, or postmortems.
- Limited status page customization. Clean default page, but you cannot match the deep branding Cachet offered.
- Self-hosted means self-maintained. If the server goes down, your status page goes down with it — exactly when you need it most.
2. Alert24
Alert24 is a hosted platform that bundles monitoring, incident management, on-call scheduling, and status pages into one tool. If you are leaving Cachet because you are tired of maintaining infrastructure and want a status page connected to real monitoring data, Alert24 is worth evaluating.
Where it wins:
- Monitoring plus status pages. Alert24 monitors your services and automatically updates your status page when something goes down. No manual incident creation during a stressful outage.
- Third-party dependency monitoring. Monitors 2,000+ third-party status pages — AWS, Stripe, GitHub, Cloudflare, Datadog, and more. For services not in the catalog, AI-powered custom provider parsing lets you add virtually any service with a public status page.
- Incident management and escalation. On-call scheduling, escalation policies, multi-channel alerting (email, SMS, voice calls), and post-incident reviews. Cachet was a status page only — Alert24 is the full incident response stack.
- 100+ pre-built webhook integrations. Datadog, Grafana, Prometheus, AWS, Jira, PagerDuty, and more. Plus email-to-incident parsing.
- Predictable pricing. Free tier includes 1 status page and 1 user. Pro runs about $29/month for 10 status pages and 5 users.
Where it falls short:
- Not self-hosted. If you need self-hosted for compliance or data sovereignty, Alert24 is not the answer. Dealbreaker for some teams.
- Less customizable than Cachet. Cachet gave you the entire Laravel codebase to modify. Alert24 offers custom domains, logos, and brand colors, but you cannot modify the underlying application.
- Webhook-based Slack and Teams integration. No interactive Slack app — you cannot acknowledge or resolve incidents from Slack.
- No SAML/SSO for enterprise IdPs. Google OAuth and MFA are available, but no Okta or Azure AD support yet.
- No native mobile app. PWA with push notifications is available, plus SMS and voice calls, but no native iOS/Android app.
3. Instatus
Instatus focuses on doing one thing well: beautiful, fast status pages.
Where it wins:
- Beautiful, CDN-backed status pages. Custom branding, custom domains, multiple themes. Pages are statically generated for fast load times.
- Affordable. Free tier for a single page. Paid plans start around $20/month.
- Third-party component status. Display the status of AWS, Stripe, and other services on your page.
- API and webhook support. Programmatic incident creation and integration with monitoring tools.
Where it falls short:
- Status pages only. No monitoring, no alerting, no on-call scheduling.
- Not self-hosted. Hosted service only.
- Limited incident management. No escalation workflows or team collaboration features.
4. Gatus
Gatus is an open source monitoring and status page tool written in Go. Lightweight and config-driven.
Where it wins:
- Lightweight. A single Go binary that runs on a $5/month VPS or a Raspberry Pi.
- Configuration as code. Everything in YAML, version-controlled alongside your infrastructure. Ideal for GitOps teams.
- Built-in monitoring. HTTP, TCP, ICMP, DNS, and SSH checks with flexible threshold logic.
- Active development. Regular releases and a growing community.
Where it falls short:
- No web-based admin UI. All configuration via YAML files. Adding a monitor means editing a file and restarting.
- No subscriber notifications. No email or SMS notifications for status page subscribers. Cachet had this.
- Limited status page customization. Functional but not branded.
5. Statuspal
Statuspal is a hosted status page aimed at B2B SaaS companies with advanced audience management needs.
Where it wins:
- Private and audience-specific status pages. Show different information to internal teams, customers, and partners.
- Subscriber segmentation. Notify different groups about different components.
- Uptime SLA reporting and localization. Multi-language support and historical uptime display for contractual commitments.
Where it falls short:
- Not self-hosted and no monitoring included. Status pages only.
- Pricing starts around $46/month. More expensive than Instatus or free self-hosted options.
6. cState (Free, Self-Hosted)
cState is a free, open source status page generator built on Hugo. The closest spiritual successor to Cachet's DIY ethos.
Where it wins:
- Completely free. Deploy to Netlify, GitHub Pages, or Cloudflare Pages. Zero cost forever.
- Maximum reliability. Static site on a CDN stays up even when your entire infrastructure is down. A genuine advantage over Cachet and Uptime Kuma.
- Full customization. Hugo templates give you complete control over HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
- Git-based workflow. Incidents are Markdown files. Integrates with CI/CD pipelines and GitOps.
Where it falls short:
- No monitoring and no subscriber notifications. Manual incident creation only, and no email or SMS notification system.
- Technical setup. Requires comfort with Hugo, Git, and static site deployment.
- Manual incident management. Every update requires a Git commit. During a high-stress outage, that is more friction than a web UI.
7. Better Stack
Better Stack is a full observability platform with monitoring, on-call scheduling, incident management, status pages, and log management. The most feature-complete hosted option on this list.
Where it wins:
- All-in-one platform. Monitoring (30-second checks), on-call, escalation policies, status pages, and logs in one subscription.
- Advanced monitoring. Heartbeat monitoring, cron job monitoring, and synthetic checks (multi-step browser tests).
- Strong integration ecosystem. Datadog, PagerDuty, AWS, Heroku, Vercel, Terraform provider, and more.
Where it falls short:
- Not self-hosted. Hosted only.
- Pricing. $24/month per seat for on-call features. A 10-person team hits $240+/month — a significant jump from free Cachet.
- Complexity. The breadth of features means more to learn and configure than a focused status page tool.
Self-Hosted vs Hosted: Which Approach?
Cachet was self-hosted, so many teams default to looking for another self-hosted option. That instinct makes sense, but it is worth questioning.
Choose self-hosted if you have compliance or data sovereignty requirements, the engineering capacity to maintain another service (updates, backups, security patches, SSL renewals), or a hard budget constraint that rules out $20-30/month.
Choose hosted if you are tired of maintaining Cachet and the whole point is reducing operational burden. You also want your status page to stay up when your infrastructure is down — hosted status pages on third-party CDNs remain available during your outages, while self-hosted pages go down with your server. A self-hosted status page that is unreachable during the outage you are trying to communicate about is worse than useless — it makes you look unprepared.
There is a middle ground: cState deployed to a free static hosting provider gives you the control of self-hosting with CDN-backed reliability, at zero cost. The tradeoff is a Git-based workflow and no subscriber notifications.
The Bottom Line
Cachet was an important project that made self-hosted status pages accessible to thousands of teams. But unmaintained software is a liability, and it is time to move on.
The decision comes down to two questions: do you need self-hosted, and how much operational burden are you willing to accept?
- Self-hosted, full-featured: Uptime Kuma. Active community, easy Docker deployment, 90+ notification channels.
- Self-hosted, lightweight and config-as-code: Gatus. Minimal resources, YAML configuration, ideal for DevOps teams.
- Self-hosted, maximum reliability at zero cost: cState. Static site on a CDN, fully customizable, manual workflow.
- Hosted, monitoring + incidents + status pages bundled: Alert24 (flat-rate pricing, 2,000+ dependency status pages, 100+ webhook integrations) or Better Stack (more integrations, per-seat pricing).
- Hosted, beautiful status pages only: Instatus.
- Hosted, B2B with private pages and segmentation: Statuspal.
If you are running Cachet today, the migration does not have to be painful. Most of these tools can be set up in an afternoon. Run your new status page alongside Cachet for a week or two, redirect your custom domain, and retire the old instance.
Whatever you choose, make sure it is actively maintained. That is the lesson Cachet taught us.