hostnag vs Healthchecks.io

Healthchecks.io does one thing well: it listens for pings from cron jobs, backups and daemons, with periods, grace times, cron-expression schedules and a generous free plan, and the whole service is open source to self-host. The same heartbeat beside the outside view: uptime, certificates, domains, DNS and mail setup on one timeline, so the job that renews a certificate and the certificate itself are watched together.

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Free for five hosts. No card, nothing to install.

Side by side

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

What breaks, and whether Healthchecks.io or hostnag covers it
What breaks	Healthchecks.io	hostnag
A host goes downwebsite, API, VPN, mail, gateway	NoHealthchecks.io only listens for pings; it polls nothing. Its own pitch is cron jobs, daemons and scheduled tasks that can send an HTTP request.	Yes
Healthchecks.io: Healthchecks.io only listens for pings; it polls nothing. Its own pitch is cron jobs, daemons and scheduled tasks that can send an HTTP request.
A certificate expiresdays-before thresholds, daily inside the last window	NoNothing is polled; the homepage suggests pinging it from the job that renews a certificate, not watching the certificate.	Yes
Healthchecks.io: Nothing is polled; the homepage suggests pinging it from the job that renews a certificate, not watching the certificate.
A domain lapsesregistration expiry from RDAP	NoNothing is polled; no domain check exists.	Yes
Healthchecks.io: Nothing is polled; no domain check exists.
A certificate is swappedfingerprint changed, wrong host, chain not trusted	NoNothing is polled; no certificate check exists.	Yes
Healthchecks.io: Nothing is polled; no certificate check exists.
A DNS record driftsexpected answer missing or changed	NoNothing is polled; no DNS check exists.	Yes
Healthchecks.io: Nothing is polled; no DNS check exists.
An ISP link dropsthe public address from several locations, by ping or a TCP port, confirmed by a ping from inside the site	NoNothing is polled; a device inside the site could ping it, which is half of a link check.	Yesoutside and inside
Healthchecks.io: Nothing is polled; a device inside the site could ping it, which is half of a link check.hostnag: outside and inside
Mail stops being deliveredMX, SPF, DKIM, DMARC and blocklists, at the expiry cadence of your plan	NoNothing is polled; no mail check exists.	Yes
Healthchecks.io: Nothing is polled; no mail check exists.
Someone issues a certificate for your domainnew certificates in the transparency logs, daily	NoNothing is polled; no certificate transparency watch exists.	Yes
Healthchecks.io: Nothing is polled; no certificate transparency watch exists.
A scheduled job stops runningcron, backups, workers: a heartbeat that goes quiet	YesA unique ping URL per job, a period and a grace time; a check is Late past the period and Down past period plus grace.	Yes
Healthchecks.io: A unique ping URL per job, a period and a grace time; a check is Late past the period and Down past period plus grace.
Your nameservers or registrar changenameservers, registrar, DNSSEC, certificate issuer, DNS answers, redirect targets	NoNothing is polled; no domain or DNS check exists.	Yes
Healthchecks.io: Nothing is polled; no domain or DNS check exists.
A vendor you depend on has an incidenttheir status page read for an outage or degraded state, the incident named	NoNothing is polled; no status page reader exists.	Yesread from their own status page
Healthchecks.io: Nothing is polled; no status page reader exists.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 Healthchecks.io has that we don't

Open source under the BSD-3-Clause license, self-hostable from a Docker image, with 25+ notification integrations.
A free plan for 20 jobs, and a $5 Supporter plan for those who want to pay for it anyway.
Cron-expression schedules with time zones, start and fail signals, and a log of every ping with its body.

Switching

01List your checks from the Healthchecks.io Management 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.
03Every check becomes a heartbeat row (type heartbeat) whose interval column is the period in minutes; each gets a new hostnag ping URL to point the job at, and the grace period is set on the monitor.
04A cron-expression schedule becomes the nearest interval: hostnag expects a ping every N minutes, not at a wall-clock time.
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 Hobbyist plan monitors 20 jobs with 100 log entries each; Business is $20 a month for 100 jobs and Business Plus $80 for 1,000, with 1,000 log entries per job.

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

Start with Pro

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.

Bring your Healthchecks.io monitors. Hear about the next outage first.

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