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. One timeline of what will break (certificates, domains, mail setup) and what is broken, without writing a check in code.
Free for five 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 inside the site | Unknown | Yes |
| Checkly: ICMP and traceroute monitors watch a public address from outside; nothing documents an inside confirmation for an office or ISP link.hostnag: outside and inside | ||
| 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. | ||
| Someone issues a certificate for your domainnew certificates in the transparency logs, daily | Unknown | Yes |
| Checkly: No certificate transparency log watch is documented among the monitor types. | ||
| 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/ moFor your own handful of hosts.
- Monitors
- 5
- Groups
- 1
- Status pages
- 1
- Seats
- 1
- Every
- 5min
- Locations
- 1
- History
- 30days
- Channels
Pro
$19/ moFor a team's sites, APIs and gateways.
- Monitors
- 50
- Groups
- 10
- Status pages
- 10
- Seats
- 5
- Every
- 1min
- Locations
- 3
- History
- 90days
- Channels
- Email, Slack, Discord, Microsoft Teams, Telegram, Webhook
Business
$79/ moFor many groups: clients, products or offices.
- Monitors
- 500
- Groups
- ∞
- Status pages
- ∞
- Seats
- 25
- Every
- 1min
- Locations
- 5
- History
- 365days
- Channels
- Email, Slack, Discord, Microsoft Teams, Telegram, Webhook, SMS, PagerDuty, Opsgenie
Sources
Read on 2026-09-17.Bring your Checkly monitors. Hear about the next outage first.
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