Cloudprober vs PHP Server Monitor
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Cloudprober | PHP Server Monitor |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 81 · Excellent | 19 · At risk |
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Language | Go | PHP |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 128 MB | 128 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, binary | docker, bare-metal |
| GitHub stars | ★ 704 | ★ 2,188 |
| First released | 2017 | 2010 |
| Replaces | Pingdom, Catchpoint | Pingdom, UptimeRobot |
What are Cloudprober and PHP Server Monitor?
Cloudprober
Cloudprober is an active monitoring tool that runs probes against your services to measure availability and latency from an external perspective. It auto-discovers targets, exports Prometheus metrics, and supports HTTP, ping, DNS, gRPC, and UDP probes.
- Black-box probing for many protocols
- Automatic target discovery
- Native Prometheus metrics
- Low memory footprint
PHP Server Monitor
PHP Server Monitor is a lightweight script that checks whether websites and servers are up and sends notifications by email, SMS, or messaging services when they go down. It runs on common LAMP hosting.
- Website and port checks
- Email and SMS alerts
- Uptime history
- Runs on shared hosting
Cloudprober vs PHP Server Monitor: key differences
Cloudprober is written in Go, while PHP Server Monitor is built with PHP. Licensing differs — Apache-2.0 for Cloudprober versus GPL-3.0 for PHP Server Monitor. PHP Server Monitor is the more established project (first released 2010), while Cloudprober arrived in 2017. PHP Server Monitor has the considerably larger community, at 2,188 GitHub stars versus 704.
Why pick each one
Choose Cloudprober if…
- Cloud-native target discovery
- Single static binary
Watch out for
- YAML configuration required
- No bundled dashboard
Choose PHP Server Monitor if…
- Very easy to deploy
- Low resource use
Watch out for
- Basic feature set
- Limited graphing
Frequently asked questions
Is Cloudprober or PHP Server Monitor better?
PHP Server Monitor is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler easy setup. Consider Cloudprober if its specific feature set fits your needs better.
Are Cloudprober and PHP Server Monitor free and open-source?
Yes. Cloudprober is licensed under Apache-2.0 and PHP Server Monitor under GPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Cloudprober and PHP Server Monitor with Docker?
Cloudprober: yes. PHP Server Monitor: yes.