Looking for a dead-simple uptime monitor that won't bankrupt me

Running twelve VPS instances across three providers for various hobby projects and small clients. Currently relying on manual checks like it's 2003. Need uptime monitoring with email alerts that won't cost more than the servers themselves.

Requirements are modest: HTTP checks every five minutes, email on down, basic status page. The catch: must be GDPR-compliant. I still have article 13 flashbacks from 2019 and refuse to touch anything that processes EU visitor data without clear DPA terms. Many "free" monitors sell telemetry I've learned.

Self-hosted Uptime Kuma looks promising but that's another instance to maintain. Tried a provider's built-in tool once and it phoned home to California without disclosure. Not acceptable under article 5(1)(b) transparency principle.

What are people actually using in 2025? Budget ceiling roughly 3 EUR/month total. Self-hosted acceptable if lightweight.

The terminal is your friend no

Uptime Kuma is server good for self-host I run it on PI old very small no problem but you need check updates security no small task

There is monitor free from OVHcloud I not use but friend say works fine no? They have API terminal-friendly you can script alert custom

GDPR thing I no understand much but I think self-host you control data no? Is not better for your article thing

Kuma is fine honestly
docker run it on the smallest box you have
Takes like 80mb ram
I have twelve monitors on a 512mb NAT instance
No issues in two years

The real secret tho
OVHcloud has provider-side monitoring API
Nobody knows about it
Its in their control panel but not documented
Check under server management then metrics then alerts
Free included with every vps
I found it by accident clicking around

Not as pretty as kuma but zero overhead
Zero maintenance
Zero cost

Of course they do and of course its hidden in some submenu designed by someoneelses nephew who took a Coursera in 2017. The entire Hosting industry runs on these undocumented Features that only surface when a bored customer misclicks at 3am. I have found three separate API endpoints on RackNerd that return JSON but have no frontend equivalent whatsoever[1]

The real tragedy is Provider inertia. They build something functional then bury it because it might cannibalize sales of their overpriced StatusPage knockoff. OVHcloud probably has a dozen engineers who dont know this API exists either. Knowledge becomes Tribal knowledge then vanishes when someone changes jobs

[1] I documented them on my blog which I will not link because selfpromotion rules and also the last time I shared something useful the HackerNews traffic melted my Time4VPS instance

Same, I still check my vps by ssh-ing in manually

Which Pi model is the old small one