Deploy Cachet as your self-hosted status page to keep users informed about service health and incidents without relying on third-party providers.

How to Set Up a Self-Hosted Status Page with Cachet

A status page is essential for communicating service health to your users. Cachet is an open-source status page system that you can self-host for complete control over your incident communication.

Why Self-Host Your Status Page?

Third-party status page providers charge per-component pricing that adds up quickly. Self-hosting with Cachet gives you unlimited components, subscribers, and incidents for the cost of a small VPS.

More importantly, if your infrastructure provider has an outage, a third-party status page hosted on the same provider won't help. Self-hosting on separate infrastructure ensures your status page stays up when it matters most.

Prerequisites

A VPS with Docker and Docker Compose installed

A domain name pointed to your server

Basic familiarity with the command line

Docker Compose Configuration

Create a `docker-compose.yml` for Cachet:

yaml

version: '3'

services:

cachet:

image: cachethq/docker:latest

ports:

"8000:8000"

environment:

DB_DRIVER=pgsql

DB_HOST=postgres

DB_DATABASE=cachet

DB_USERNAME=cachet

DB_PASSWORD=your_secure_password

APP_KEY=base64:your_app_key_here

APP_LOG=errorlog

MAIL_DRIVER=smtp

MAIL_HOST=smtp.example.com

MAIL_PORT=587

MAIL_USERNAME=alerts@example.com

MAIL_PASSWORD=your_mail_password

depends_on:

postgres

restart: unless-stopped

postgres:

image: postgres:15-alpine

environment:

POSTGRES_USER=cachet

POSTGRES_PASSWORD=your_secure_password

POSTGRES_DB=cachet

volumes:

postgres_data:/var/lib/postgresql/data

restart: unless-stopped

volumes:

postgres_data:

Setting Up Components and Groups

After deployment, organize your services into logical groups:

1. **Infrastructure** — Servers, networking, DNS

2. **Core Services** — API, web application, database

3. **Integrations** — Email, webhooks, third-party connections

Each component gets its own status indicator: Operational, Performance Issues, Partial Outage, or Major Outage.

Automating Status Updates

Cachet provides a REST API for automated status updates. Integrate it with your monitoring stack:

bash

curl -X POST https://status.example.com/api/v1/components/1 \

-H "X-Cachet-Token: your_api_token" \

-H "Content-Type: application/json" \

-d '{"status": 1}'

Connect this to Uptime Kuma, Healthchecks.io, or your preferred monitoring tool to automatically update component status when issues are detected.

Subscriber Notifications

Cachet supports email notifications for subscribers. Users can subscribe to specific components and receive updates only for services they care about. Configure your SMTP settings to enable this feature.

Reverse Proxy Setup

Place Cachet behind your reverse proxy for SSL termination:

status.example.com {

reverse_proxy cachet:8000

}

Incident Management Best Practices

When creating incidents, follow these guidelines:

**Be specific** about what's affected and what users might experience

**Update frequently** even if there's no change — silence breeds anxiety

**Post a postmortem** for major incidents to build trust with users

**Use scheduled maintenance** for planned downtime to set expectations

A well-maintained status page significantly reduces support tickets during incidents and builds user confidence in your platform's transparency.