hostnag vs Cronitor

Cronitor is cron job monitoring first: schedule-aware telemetry with run, complete and fail events, auto-discovery of crontabs, and uptime, browser and API checks beside it. One timeline of what will break (certificates, domains, mail setup) and what is broken, beside the heartbeat.

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Cronitor read from its public documentation on 2026-09-17. Tell us if it changed.

What breaks, and whether Cronitor or hostnag covers it
What breaks	Cronitor	hostnag
A host goes downwebsite, API, VPN, mail, gateway	YesHTTP/HTTPS, browser-based and TCP checks from 11 locations.	Yes
Cronitor: HTTP/HTTPS, browser-based and TCP checks from 11 locations.
A certificate expiresdays-before thresholds, daily inside the last window	YesAn alert 28 days before expiry by default, configurable from 1 to 90 days.	Yes
Cronitor: An alert 28 days before expiry by default, configurable from 1 to 90 days.
A domain lapsesregistration expiry from RDAP	UnknownThe uptime documentation covers certificate expiry; nothing documents domain registration expiry.	Yes
Cronitor: The uptime documentation covers certificate expiry; nothing documents domain registration expiry.
A certificate is swappedfingerprint changed, wrong host, chain not trusted	UnknownOnly expiry is documented; nothing says whether a fingerprint, hostname or chain change is detected.	Yes
Cronitor: Only expiry is documented; nothing says whether a fingerprint, hostname or chain change is detected.
A DNS record driftsexpected answer missing or changed	UnknownNo DNS check is documented among the three uptime checks.	Yes
Cronitor: No DNS check is documented among the three uptime checks.
An ISP link dropsthe public address from several locations, by ping or a TCP port, confirmed by a ping from inside the site	UnknownNo ping check and no inside confirmation for an office or ISP link is documented.	Yesoutside and inside
Cronitor: No ping check and no inside confirmation for an office or ISP link is documented.hostnag: outside and inside
Mail stops being deliveredMX, SPF, DKIM, DMARC and blocklists, at the expiry cadence of your plan	UnknownA TCP check can reach a mail port; nothing documents SPF, DKIM, DMARC or blocklist checks.	Yes
Cronitor: A TCP check can reach a mail port; nothing documents SPF, DKIM, DMARC or blocklist checks.
Someone issues a certificate for your domainnew certificates in the transparency logs, daily	UnknownNo certificate transparency log watch is documented.	Yes
Cronitor: No certificate transparency log watch is documented.
A scheduled job stops runningcron, backups, workers: a heartbeat that goes quiet	YesRun, complete and fail pings against a cron, interval or time-of-day schedule, with a grace period.	Yes
Cronitor: Run, complete and fail pings against a cron, interval or time-of-day schedule, with a grace period.
Your nameservers or registrar changenameservers, registrar, DNSSEC, certificate issuer, DNS answers, redirect targets	UnknownNothing documents watching nameservers, a registrar, DNSSEC or redirect targets.	Yes
Cronitor: Nothing documents watching nameservers, a 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	UnknownNothing documents reading a vendor's status page.	Yesread from their own status page
Cronitor: 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 Cronitor has that we don't

Schedule-aware job telemetry: run, complete and fail events judged against a cron expression, not just "it pinged".
Auto-discovery of jobs on Linux, Kubernetes, Windows, GitHub Actions and Airflow, plus SDKs for Python, Node.js, Ruby and PHP.
Synthetic browser checks, web analytics and 30-second uptime checks.

Switching

01List your monitors from the Cronitor 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.
03HTTP uptime checks become http monitors and TCP checks tcp; cron and heartbeat monitors become heartbeats with a new hostnag ping URL, called once per run (hostnag hears that the job ran; the run, complete and fail states have no counterpart).
04Browser checks have no counterpart in hostnag; watch the URL they exercise instead.
05Check intervals snap up to the nearest hostnag preset (1, 5, 15, 60, 360 or 1440 minutes).
06Monitors are created up to your plan's limit; the rest stay listed in the preview so nothing is lost silently.

Pricing

A free Hacker plan covers 5 monitors at 5-minute checks; Business is metered at $2 a month per monitor plus $5 per user with 30-second checks, and Enterprise starts at $6,000 a year.

Free

$0/ mo

For your own handful of hosts.

Monitors: 5
Groups: 1
Status pages: 1
Seats: 1
Every: 5min
Locations: 1
History: 30days
Channels: Email

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Pro

$19/ mo

For 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

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Business

$79/ mo

For 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

Start with Business

Sources

Read on 2026-09-17.

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