hostnag vs Checkly
Checkly is synthetic monitoring for developers: Playwright browser checks and multistep API checks written as code, with URL, TCP, DNS, ICMP, SSL, gRPC, traceroute and heartbeat monitors beside them. Certificates, domains and mail setup watched from a form, without writing a check in code.
14 days of Pro to start, then free for 20 hosts. No card, nothing to install.
Side by side
Checkly read from its public documentation on 2026-09-17. Tell us if it changed.| What breaks | Checkly | hostnag |
|---|---|---|
| A host goes downwebsite, API, VPN, mail, gateway | Yes | Yes |
| Checkly: URL, TCP, DNS, ICMP, gRPC and traceroute monitors; the pricing page lists them on every plan. | ||
| A certificate expiresdays-before thresholds, daily inside the last window | Yes | Yes |
| Checkly: URL monitors alert before a certificate expires, and a dedicated SSL monitor checks expiry. | ||
| A domain lapsesregistration expiry from RDAP | Unknown | Yes |
| Checkly: The monitor types cover the certificate; nothing documents domain registration expiry. | ||
| A certificate is swappedfingerprint changed, wrong host, chain not trusted | Partly | Yes |
| Checkly: The SSL monitor checks chain validity, hostname match and a minimum TLS version; nothing documents alerting when the certificate itself is replaced. | ||
| A DNS record driftsexpected answer missing or changed | Yes | Yes |
| Checkly: DNS monitors "resolve A, CNAME, MX, and other DNS records and assert the values you expect." | ||
| An ISP link dropsthe public address from several locations, by ping or a TCP port, confirmed by a ping from an internal device | Unknown | Yes |
| Checkly: ICMP and traceroute monitors watch a public address externally; nothing documents an internal confirmation for an office or ISP link.hostnag: external and internal | ||
| Mail stops being deliveredMX, SPF, DKIM, DMARC and blocklists, at the expiry cadence of your plan | Unknown | Yes |
| Checkly: TCP monitors reach a mail server's port; nothing documents SPF, DKIM, DMARC or blocklist checks. | ||
| A scheduled job stops runningcron, backups, workers: a heartbeat that goes quiet | Yes | Yes |
| Checkly: Heartbeat monitors expect a ping on your schedule and alert when a job fails to run or finishes late. | ||
| Your nameservers or registrar changenameservers, registrar, DNSSEC, certificate issuer, DNS answers, redirect targets | Partly | Yes |
| Checkly: A DNS monitor can assert an NS answer; nothing documents watching the registrar, DNSSEC or redirect targets. | ||
| A vendor you depend on has an incidenttheir status page read for an outage or degraded state, the incident named | Unknown | Yes |
| Checkly: Nothing documents reading a vendor's status page.hostnag: read from their own status page | ||
UNKNOWN means their documentation did not say either way on the day we read it. PARTLY is covered with a limit noted in the cell.
What Checkly has that we don't
- Playwright browser checks and multistep API checks, written and versioned as code.
- Monitoring as code: a CLI, a Terraform provider and a Pulumi integration.
- gRPC and traceroute monitors, and checks as often as every second on Enterprise.
Switching
- 01List your monitors from the Checkly CLI, Terraform state or the API; each is one row.
- 02Put them in a CSV with at least the columns type and target (name, interval, port, keyword, expected_status and record_type are optional; the import dialog links a template) and upload it in the import dialog.
- 03URL monitors become http, TCP monitors tcp, DNS monitors dns (with record_type), SSL monitors tls_cert; heartbeat monitors become heartbeats with a new hostnag ping URL to point the job at.
- 04Ping (ICMP) monitors carry over as Ping monitors, run from hostnag's own probes.
- 05Browser, API, gRPC and traceroute checks have no counterpart in hostnag; leave them out or watch the URL they exercise.
- 06Check intervals snap up to the nearest hostnag preset (1, 5, 15, 60, 360 or 1440 minutes).
- 07Monitors are created up to your plan's limit; the rest stay listed in the preview so nothing is lost silently.
Pricing
A free Hobby plan covers 10 uptime monitors at a 2-minute floor with capped browser and API check runs; Starter is $24 a month for 50 monitors at 1 minute, Team $64 for 75 at 30 seconds, and Enterprise is custom.Free
$0/ mo$0/ yrFor your own handful of hosts.
- Monitors
- 20
- Beacons
- 2
- Groups
- 3
- Status pages
- 1
- Seats
- 3
- Every
- 5min
- Locations
- 1
- History
- 30days
- Channels
- Email, Slack, Discord, Microsoft Teams, Telegram, Webhook
- More
- No packs
Pro
$19/ mo$190/ yrFor a team's sites, APIs and gateways.
- Monitors
- 100
- Beacons
- 10
- Groups
- 25
- Status pages
- 10
- Seats
- 10
- Every
- 1min
- Locations
- 3
- History
- 90days
- Channels
- Email, Slack, Discord, Microsoft Teams, Telegram, Webhook, PagerDuty, Opsgenie
- More
- Packs of 100 monitors at $15 a month, up to 4; packs of 10 beacons at $10 a month, up to 9
Business
$79/ mo$790/ yrFor many groups: clients, products or offices.
- Monitors
- 500
- Beacons
- 100
- Groups
- ∞
- Status pages
- ∞
- Seats
- ∞
- Every
- 1min
- Locations
- 5
- History
- 365days
- Channels
- Email, Slack, Discord, Microsoft Teams, Telegram, Webhook, PagerDuty, Opsgenie, SMS
- More
- Packs of 100 monitors at $15 a month, as many as you need; packs of 10 beacons at $10 a month, as many as you need
Sources
Read on 2026-09-17.Bring your Checkly monitors. Hear about the next outage first.
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