Send Uptime Kuma alerts to WhatsApp

A Webhook notification, a custom body and two headers. No phone number of your own, no WhatsApp Business account, and nothing extra to keep running.

Uptime Kuma has had a WhatsApp (WAHA) notification type since March 2025, and it wants a WAHA server of your own behind it — a self-hosted gateway you run and keep alive, holding a WhatsApp number of yours open as a linked device, which is the thing that gets numbers banned. That is also where the issue that asked for this ended up; the official-API answers in it want a Meta developer account, a registered number and an approved template before the first message.

This is the plain Webhook notification type instead, posting to an endpoint that already has a number and a template. It takes about three minutes.

1. Make a key

In the Jabee dashboard, go to Management then Approvals and create an API key. It starts jak_. Copy it now; it is not shown again.

Whoever is going to be messaged needs a verified phone, which they get by tapping a link in the dashboard and sending one message. Until somebody has done that there is nobody to deliver to.

2. Add the notification

In Uptime Kuma: Settings → Notifications → Setup Notification, and choose Webhook as the notification type.

Post URL       https://api.jabee.ai/api/v1/alerts
Request Body   Custom Body

Choosing Custom Body reveals a text area. This is the whole of it:

{
  "title": "{{ monitorJSON.name }} is {% if heartbeatJSON.status == 1 %}up{% else %}down{% endif %}",
  "body": "{{ msg }}"
}

Then open Additional Headers and put in both of these:

{
  "Authorization": "Bearer jak_your_key_here",
  "Content-Type": "application/json"
}

The content type matters. In custom-body mode Uptime Kuma sends the string you wrote without declaring what it is, and an endpoint that is told nothing will not parse it as JSON. Setting it here is one line and removes the whole class of problem.

Press Test. A WhatsApp message should arrive in about a second.

3. Attach it to your monitors

Tick Default enabled before you save and every new monitor gets it. Existing monitors each need the notification ticked in their own edit screen — Uptime Kuma does not retrofit it.

Worth setting deliberately: Resend Notification if Down X times. It is how often a continuing outage messages you again, and on WhatsApp that is the difference between being informed and being nagged.

What arrives

Two messages per incident, one when it goes down and one when it comes back:

api.example.com is down
[api.example.com] [🔴 Down] Request failed with status code 502

api.example.com is up
[api.example.com] [✅ Up] 200 - OK

That is Uptime Kuma's design and there is no switch for it: one notification channel fires on both events. It is worth knowing because it is two of your monthly allowance per outage rather than one. The Grafana route drops recoveries unless you ask for them, because there Grafana says which kind of event it is sending; here the notification itself does not get that choice.

Adding the link

You can put the monitor's address in the message, so it is one tap from the phone:

{
  "title": "{{ monitorJSON.name }} is {% if heartbeatJSON.status == 1 %}up{% else %}down{% endif %}",
  "body": "{{ msg }}",
  "url": "{{ monitorJSON.url }}"
}

Only for HTTP monitors. A ping, port or DNS monitor has no address, and Uptime Kuma fills the field with https:// or nothing at all — neither is a real URL, and the request is rejected with a 400 rather than silently losing the message. If your monitors are a mixture, leave url out.

One honest caveat: the body is a string, not an object

Uptime Kuma renders your custom body as text and sends the result, so the JSON is only valid if the values are. A monitor named api "prod" closes the string early and the request fails — the template language it uses has no filter that would escape it for you.

In practice: avoid double quotes and backslashes in monitor names, which almost nobody has anyway. If you cannot, send the name in the body rather than the title and keep the title fixed.

Where it goes

One phone per business, and it is your own: the account owner's verified number by default, or another handset — an ops phone, a shared on-call one — which you point alerts at in the dashboard, under Where alerts go. Either way that phone verifies itself by sending one message to the Jabee number, carrying a code from the dashboard.

So there is nothing to address and no recipient field. To reach several people, connect your own WhatsApp number and send from there: alerts on Jabee's number go out on a sender every business here shares, and the volume you send spends a reputation everybody else depends on.

What it costs

$29 a month for 500 alerts and approvals together, then 3 cents each. The first three are free, so you can wire this up and watch a message arrive before paying for anything. No per-seat charge.

Two messages per outage, remember, unless you are only watching things that never recover.

Questions