What is ciao used for?

ciao is a self-hosted HTTP monitoring tool that checks URLs on a cron schedule and sends email or webhook alerts when their status changes. It is a good fit for uptime checks for internal services.

Yes. ciao is open source under the MIT licence. Its source code is on GitHub at brotandgames/ciao and is written mainly in Ruby.

Yes. ciao is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

Can I self-host ciao?

Yes. ciao can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is ciao an alternative to?

ciao is an open-source alternative to UptimeRobot, Pingdom and StatusCake. Other open-source alternatives to UptimeRobot include Gatus, Uptime Kuma and Peekaping.

Is ciao actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to ciao was on 16 July 2026, and the latest release is 1.10.1, published on 16 July 2026. The project has 2k stars on GitHub.

ciao: open-source alternative to UptimeRobot, Pingdom

About ciao

ciao, from Brot and Games, is a small web application that checks HTTP and HTTPS endpoints for a status code, or for lower-level TCP errors, and sends a notification when the status changes. It was built to be easy to install and maintain, with no external dependencies such as databases or caches, in both public and private environments.

Checks are scheduled with cron syntax, and the app comes with a web UI and a RESTful JSON API. It tracks status changes, checks TLS certificate expiry once a day and warns when a certificate has under 30 days left. Notifications can go out by email through providers such as Gmail or SendGrid, or by webhook to tools like Slack and Rocket.Chat, and an optional Prometheus metrics endpoint feeds dashboards in tools like Grafana.

Configuration is done through environment variables, and basic authentication can protect the app when combined with TLS. There are instructions for a Docker image, a Helm chart and a community Terraform provider. ciao is written in Ruby and licensed under MIT.

Key features

Scheduled HTTP and HTTPS checks via cron
Email and webhook notifications
TLS certificate expiry warnings
Web UI and RESTful JSON API
Prometheus metrics endpoint
Docker image and Helm chart

Good fit for

→Uptime checks for internal services
→Lightweight alternative to hosted uptime monitors

Built with: Ruby
Tags: uptime; monitoring; http-checks; alerting; prometheus; self-hosted; ruby; docker

ciao: questions and answers

What is ciao used for?: ciao is a self-hosted HTTP monitoring tool that checks URLs on a cron schedule and sends email or webhook alerts when their status changes. It is a good fit for uptime checks for internal services.
Is ciao open source?: Yes. ciao is open source under the MIT licence. Its source code is on GitHub at brotandgames/ciao and is written mainly in Ruby.
Is ciao free?: Yes. ciao is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host ciao?: Yes. ciao can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is ciao an alternative to?: ciao is an open-source alternative to UptimeRobot, Pingdom and StatusCake. Other open-source alternatives to UptimeRobot include Gatus, Uptime Kuma and Peekaping.
Is ciao actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to ciao was on 16 July 2026, and the latest release is 1.10.1, published on 16 July 2026. The project has 2k stars on GitHub.