To get phone call notifications from Uptime Kuma, add a Webhook notification in Kuma that posts JSON to an Edesy OnCall alert webhook URL. When a Kuma monitor goes down, OnCall phones the people on your escalation policy, reads out which monitor is down and why, and asks them to press 1 to acknowledge or 2 to escalate. When Kuma reports the monitor up again, the incident closes. Your checks stay in Kuma; OnCall adds the call.
Uptime Kuma is popular with Indian developers, agencies and small SaaS teams because it is free, self-hosted and easy to run on a small server. Its weak spot for a small team is the "nobody saw the alert" problem: notifications land in email or a chat app and wait until someone looks. A ringing phone with escalation fixes that.
What you get on top of Kuma
| Kuma alone | Kuma + Edesy OnCall | |
|---|---|---|
| Detection | Kuma's checks | Kuma's checks (unchanged) |
| Notification | Email, chat and others | Phone call plus optional email |
| Needs a response | No | Press 1 to acknowledge |
| Nobody responds | Nothing happens | Next step of the escalation policy is called |
| Language | Message text | Spoken alert in English or Hindi per contact |
| Incident record | Kuma event list | Incident timeline: who was called, who acknowledged |
Step 1: Create the webhook monitor in OnCall
Sign in at oncall.edesy.in. In Setup, connect your workspace and choose the caller-ID number. OnCall needs an Edesy phone number in your workspace for this; buy one in the voice app if you don't have one.
Then Monitors → New → Alert webhook. Name it ("Kuma - client sites"), pick an escalation policy and save. Copy the URL from the monitor page:
https://oncall.edesy.in/ingest/<token>Keep it private. The token is the only credential. Rotate it on the monitor page if it leaks.
Step 2: Add the notification in Uptime Kuma
In Uptime Kuma: Settings → Notifications → Setup Notification.
Notification Type: Webhook
Friendly Name: Edesy OnCall
Post URL: https://oncall.edesy.in/ingest/<token>
Request Body: Preset - application/jsonSave, then enable the notification on each Kuma monitor that should phone someone (or tick "Default enabled" and "Apply on all existing monitors"). Only turn it on for monitors worth a call. Kuma's other notifications can carry the rest.
The Test button sends Kuma's test message. OnCall accepts it as a no-op, so you see that the URL works without anyone's phone ringing. To hear a real alert, send a test call to a contact from OnCall.
How OnCall reads Kuma's payload
OnCall spots a Kuma payload by its heartbeat or monitor fields. You can force the format with ?format=uptimekuma on the URL.
| Kuma field | Used for |
|---|---|
heartbeat.status |
0 (down) opens an incident; 1 (up) resolves it |
monitor.id |
Dedup key, so each Kuma monitor gets its own incident |
monitor.name |
Title read aloud on the call |
heartbeat.msg (else msg) |
Reason, e.g. "Request failed with status code 502" |
A down event sounds like: "This is an alert from Sharma Digital. Kuma - client sites is down since 1:42 AM. Reason: Client A shop: Request failed with status code 502." Then the press-1 prompt.
Repeated down notifications for the same Kuma monitor update the one open incident rather than calling again from the start. When Kuma sends the up event, the incident resolves and everyone who was paged gets a "back up" email.
Full field list: Uptime Kuma ingest doc.
Avoid getting woken for blips
Kuma already has retries and a heartbeat retry interval. Set Kuma's Retries to 1 or 2 so a single failed check doesn't send a down notification. OnCall then calls on the first down event it receives.
Escalation for a small team
A practical two-person policy:
- Step 1, immediately: call the developer on duty, plus email.
- Step 2, after 5 minutes: call the second person.
- Repeat once if nobody acknowledges (the ladder restarts after a 5-minute pause).
Contacts need a verified phone, done by a call that reads out a 4-digit code. Each contact picks English or Hindi for their calls. More patterns: escalation policies explained.
At night (21:00 to 09:00 IST), a workspace on the standard calling window gets a plain spoken alert without press 1; acknowledge from the email or dashboard. Edesy support can switch on 24x7 press-1 calls. See night mode.
Kuma or OnCall's own checks?
You don't have to choose. Keep Kuma for the checks it does that OnCall doesn't, such as ping, DNS and certificate expiry, and send its alerts to OnCall for the call. Or, for a simple HTTP, keyword or TCP check, use an OnCall monitor directly and skip a hop. A self-hosted Kuma can't warn you if the server it runs on dies, so an outside check on a key site is a sensible backup. The website down alert guide shows how.
Cost
One OnCall webhook monitor can carry every Kuma monitor, so the Free plan (Rs 0, 3 monitors, 2 contacts) is often enough to start. Starter is Rs 499 a month (20 monitors, 5 contacts) and Pro Rs 1,499 a month (100 monitors, 25 contacts). Alert calls are billed per minute from your Edesy wallet. Prices exclude 18% GST. New accounts get Rs 20 welcome credit. See pricing.
More: the Uptime Kuma integration page, the agency client site monitoring use case and the OnCall overview.
OnCall alerts by phone call and email. It does not send SMS, WhatsApp, Slack or Teams messages.
FAQ
Does Uptime Kuma support phone call notifications?
Uptime Kuma sends notifications through many channels, including a generic Webhook. Point that webhook at an Edesy OnCall alert webhook URL and each down event becomes a phone call to your escalation policy.
Which Uptime Kuma request body should I choose?
Choose Preset - application/json. OnCall reads the heartbeat status (0 for down, 1 for up), the monitor name and the message from that payload.
Do I need one OnCall monitor per Kuma monitor?
No. One OnCall webhook can serve many Kuma monitors. Each Kuma monitor gets its own incident, keyed by its Kuma monitor ID, so they never merge.
What does the Kuma test notification do?
It is accepted and treated as a no-op, so it confirms the URL works without phoning anyone. Use a contact's test call in OnCall to hear a real alert.
Add phone calls to Uptime Kuma free at oncall.edesy.in.