Self-Hosted vs Managed: The Real Cost
Self-hosting your status page looks cheaper on paper. But when you factor in engineering time, infrastructure risk, and the cost of your status page going down with your product — a managed solution is often the better choice.
Self-Hosted (Uptime Kuma, Cachet)
Hidden costs add up quickly
VPS (Hetzner CX22)
2 vCPU, 4GB RAM, 40GB disk — runs Uptime Kuma
€4.15/mo
Domain (.com)
~€15/year for a .com domain
€1.25/mo
Backup storage
Hetzner Backup Box or S3-compatible storage
€1.50/mo
Engineering: setup
~4 hours @ €100/hr, amortized over 12 months
€33.33/mo
Engineering: maintenance
~1.5 hours/month for updates, monitoring
€12.50/mo
Engineering: incidents
Occasional 3 AM pages, context switching
€33.33/mo
True monthly cost
€86.07
Plus: your status page goes down when your server does
Upwarden (Managed)
Everything included, no hidden costs
Starter plan
€10/mo
Separate infrastructure — stays up when you go down
Save €76.08/month with Upwarden Starter
Plus: your status page stays online even when your servers don't
View Full PricingThe hidden costs self-hosting advocates don't mention
Single point of failure
Self-hosted status pages run on your infrastructure. When your server goes down, your status page goes down too — exactly when customers need it.
Engineering distraction
Every hour spent maintaining monitoring infrastructure is an hour not spent on your product. At €100/hr engineer cost, that's expensive.
Security updates
Self-hosted tools need regular security patches. Miss one update and you're vulnerable. Managed services handle this automatically.
No automatic failover
If your self-hosted monitor server fails, who monitors the monitor? Managed services have redundant infrastructure across multiple regions.
Why separate infrastructure matters
Self-hosted (shared infrastructure)
Your status page runs on the same server (or same cloud provider) as your application. When your server runs out of memory, or your deploy goes wrong, or your cloud provider has an outage — your status page goes down too.
Result: Customers see nothing during an outage.
Upwarden (separate infrastructure)
We run on Hetzner servers in Germany. Your application runs wherever you host it. These are completely separate failure domains. When your server crashes, your customers still see real-time status on your Upwarden page.
Result: Customers stay informed during outages.
Stop maintaining infrastructure. Start focusing on your product.
Get monitoring + status pages + incident management for less than the cost of a small VPS.