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Frequently asked questions

• Does Cachet monitor uptime?

  No. Cachet performs no checks of any kind: no HTTP, SSL, keyword, ping, port or heartbeat monitoring. It is a communication layer, and its own homepage tells you to hook your monitoring tools into its API. Components and incidents only change when a person or an external script updates them, which is why a whole ecosystem of third-party sidecars exists just to bolt detection onto it. Pulsetic does both jobs in one tool: it checks your websites as often as every 30 seconds from up to 15 locations and updates your status page automatically.

• Is Cachet really free?

  The software is free and open source, funded by sponsors. The running costs are yours, though: a server, a PHP 8.2+ and Laravel stack with a database, a cron job, SSL and backups, plus the hours to set it up and keep it patched. One licensing detail worth knowing: the classic v2 is MIT, while the v3 rewrite uses a more restrictive source-available license that forbids redistributing Cachet as a standalone product. Pulsetic has a free hosted plan, and paid plans start at $9 per month with no infrastructure to run.

• Is Cachet still maintained?

  Yes, with an asterisk. After years of dormancy, the original creator took the project back and announced a revival in 2023, shipping v2.4 to close out the legacy branch. Development of the v3 rewrite is genuinely active, but as of mid-2026 it has no tagged release and the docs describe it as not production-ready, while v2.4 from late 2023 remains the only production version and is officially unsupported. You can run Cachet today, but you are choosing between an unsupported release and an unreleased one.

• Can visitors subscribe to a Cachet status page?

  On v2, yes: email subscriptions were a headline feature. The v3 rewrite does not support subscribers yet, and the same goes for the embeddable status badges and two-factor authentication that v2 shipped. Until v3 catches up, those features exist only on the legacy branch. Pulsetic status pages include subscriber notifications and embeddable badges on every paid plan, starting at $9 per month.

• Can Cachet alert me when my website goes down?

  No, because it never knows. Cachet runs no checks, so it has no concept of your website being down: there are no email, SMS, Slack or phone alerts for outages, and the v3 webhooks fire on status page events you create, not on downtime it detects. Pulsetic detects the outage itself, alerts you and updates your status page automatically. Email and webhook alerts come with every plan; phone calls, SMS, WhatsApp, Slack and Telegram start on the $9 Solo plan.

• How customizable is a Cachet status page?

  Genuinely customizable, which is part of its appeal: theme colors with light and dark modes, a dedicated custom CSS setting, custom header and footer HTML, free branding removal, a built-in language setting and your own domain by virtue of self-hosting. The overall layout is fixed beyond component ordering. Pulsetic gives you comparable control on a page we host and keep up for you: colors, logos, layouts and CSS from $9 a month, and full white labeling from the Team plan at $19.

• What do I need to self-host Cachet?

  A server with PHP 8.2+ and Composer, a database, a cron job for the queue, a web server with SSL, and a backup routine. Setup takes a few hours and maintenance is ongoing: OS and framework updates, security patches and capacity planning. There is also the classic catch: the status page must live on separate, more reliable infrastructure than the things it reports on, or it goes down with them. With Pulsetic there is nothing to host at all.

• When should I pick Pulsetic over Cachet?

  Pick Pulsetic when you want detection and communication in one tool: monitoring from up to 15 locations on the Team plan, alerts once a second location confirms a failure, and a status page that works today, with subscriber emails and badges from $9, hosted on infrastructure that stays up when yours does not. Cachet remains a fine choice if you enjoy self-hosting, already run monitoring elsewhere and have the ops time to maintain a Laravel app. If the status page is meant to reassure customers during your worst hour, hosting it yourself is the one place you do not want a single point of failure.