Watch your containers restarts and all.
Checkmate tells you the moment a container stops running or turns unhealthy, next to the uptime monitors for the services inside it. Per-container CPU, memory, restart counts and logs come with it.
Spot the container that quietly died.
A container can exit at 3am and be restarted by its policy before anyone notices, or stay down until a customer does. Docker monitors track container state on the schedule you set, so either way there is a record and an alert.
If an image ships a HEALTHCHECK, the result is collected with each check and unhealthy shows as its own state, with stopped and unhealthy containers both firing alerts.
- Container status and health states
- Stopped and unhealthy alerts on the 13 channels you use
- Incident history per container
Catch crash loops in the act.
Every container already shows its restart count, so a service bouncing behind its restart policy stops being invisible.
The pattern belongs in history too: one restart after a deploy is noise, 40 an hour is a bug. A restart-event timeline that makes loops readable at a glance is in the works.
- Restart count on every container today
- Event timeline that separates blips from loops: upcoming
Design preview: this view is being built.
See which container is eating the box.
Each Docker host page lists its containers with CPU and memory side by side, and every container detail page charts its usage over time.
'Which one is it' from a dashboard beats SSHing in to run docker stats while the pager keeps buzzing.
- Per-container CPU and memory, charted over time
- Host view that ranks containers side by side
- Container logs collected and retained per host
For everyone whose stack is a compose file.
Self-hosters
Your services live in containers on one or two boxes. Watch all of them without adding a heavyweight orchestration layer.
Small product teams
A VPS running a compose stack is a common production setup. Container health, host health and endpoint uptime in one dashboard covers it.
Homelab tinkerers
20 containers accumulate fast. Get a straight answer to which ones are up, unhealthy or stuck in a restart loop.
See what it covers and what it doesn't.
Covered
- Container status and health states, checked on your schedule
- Stopped and unhealthy alerts on 13 notification channels
- Per-container CPU and memory, charted over time
- Restart counts and container logs
- Incident history and uptime per container
- Host-level metrics via the Capture agent
Out of scope
- Restart-event timelines: a per-container restart count ships today, the event view is upcoming
- Kubernetes control planes and pods: Checkmate watches containers, not orchestrators
- Image registry and vulnerability scanning
For the technically curious.
A first-class monitor type
Docker monitors sit next to HTTP, ping and the rest. Add one per container you care about, set the interval and route its alerts like any other monitor.
Health checks are first-class
The HEALTHCHECK your image defines is the best signal of container wellbeing. Checkmate stores the result with each check, shows unhealthy as its own state and alerts on it like any other status change.
Pairs with service checks
The container being up and the service inside answering are different facts. Run a Docker monitor next to an HTTP monitor for the same app, and know which layer broke.
Checkmate runs in Docker too
The whole platform ships as a small set of containers with a compose file. Monitoring containers from containers is the normal setup here.
Frequently asked questions
Add a Docker monitor for a container. Checkmate checks whether it is running on the schedule you set, records the history and alerts through your notification channels the moment it stops.
Status changes alert immediately, so a container that stops or turns unhealthy fires your channels, and every container shows its restart count. A dedicated restart-event timeline that makes loops visible as a pattern is upcoming.
Yes. Each Docker host page lists its containers with CPU and memory, and every container's detail page charts usage over time next to its state, health and restart count.
No. Checkmate watches containers and hosts, not orchestrator control planes. If you run plain Docker or compose stacks, it fits. For Kubernetes-native observability you'll want a Kubernetes-native tool.
Yes. It ships as a small set of containers: pull the compose file, run it and the dashboard is up. About 1 GB of RAM on any Docker host is enough to start.
Yes. Open source under AGPL-3.0, self-hosted, with no container or host limits.
