hostnag vs HetrixTools
HetrixTools pairs uptime monitoring from 12 locations with IP and domain blacklist monitoring on an hourly cadence, plus installable server monitoring software, white-label reports and status pages, all at hosting-industry prices with a free tier. One timeline of what will break (certificates, domains, DNS, the whole mail setup) and what is broken, with nothing installed on the server.
Free for five hosts. No card, nothing to install.
Side by side
HetrixTools read from its public documentation on 2026-09-17. Tell us if it changed.| What breaks | HetrixTools | hostnag |
|---|---|---|
| A host goes downwebsite, API, VPN, mail, gateway | Yes | Yes |
| HetrixTools: Website, Ping/Service and SMTP monitors checked from up to 12 locations throughout the minute. | ||
| A certificate expiresdays-before thresholds, daily inside the last window | Yes | Yes |
| HetrixTools: SSL expiration is monitored for every website monitor by default, with warnings X days ahead. | ||
| A domain lapsesregistration expiry from RDAP | Yes | Yes |
| HetrixTools: Domain expiration is monitored for every uptime monitor's domain by default, with alerts X days ahead. | ||
| A certificate is swappedfingerprint changed, wrong host, chain not trusted | Partly | Yes |
| HetrixTools: SSL Authenticity checks that the certificate is valid, authentic and matches the hostname; nothing documents alerting when the certificate is replaced. | ||
| A DNS record driftsexpected answer missing or changed | Unknown | Yes |
| HetrixTools: Nameserver changes are detected; nothing documents watching other records against an expected answer. | ||
| 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 |
| HetrixTools: Ping 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 | Partly | Yes |
| HetrixTools: IP and domain blacklist monitoring, as often as hourly, and an SMTP reachability monitor; nothing documents SPF, DKIM or DMARC checks. | ||
| Someone issues a certificate for your domainnew certificates in the transparency logs, daily | Unknown | Yes |
| HetrixTools: No certificate transparency log watch is documented. | ||
| A scheduled job stops runningcron, backups, workers: a heartbeat that goes quiet | Partly | Yes |
| HetrixTools: The heartbeat uptime monitor is the installed server monitor's own signal, expected every 60 seconds to an hour; there is no ping URL for an arbitrary job. | ||
| Your nameservers or registrar changenameservers, registrar, DNSSEC, certificate issuer, DNS answers, redirect targets | Partly | Yes |
| HetrixTools: Nameserver change detection for every uptime monitor's domain; nothing documents a registrar change, 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 |
| HetrixTools: 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 HetrixTools has that we don't
- Blacklist monitoring for whole IP blocks and ranges, with Microsoft SNDS, on plans up to 16,384 monitors.
- Installable server monitoring for CPU, RAM, disk and network, with its own heartbeat.
- MTR and ping samples collected during an outage, phone-call alerts, sub-accounts and white-label domains.
Switching
- 01List your uptime monitors from the HetrixTools 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.
- 03Website monitors become http, Service monitors tcp with their port, SMTP monitors tcp on port 25 (hostnag's mail check reads the domain's records separately).
- 04Ping (ICMP) monitors carry over as Ping monitors, run from hostnag's own probes.
- 05Blacklist monitors become a mail monitor on the domain, which checks its MX addresses against four zones daily; an IP-only blacklist monitor has no direct counterpart.
- 06Server monitors, which need their installed software, have no counterpart in hostnag; a Beacon script can ping a heartbeat instead.
- 07Check intervals snap up to the nearest hostnag preset (1, 5, 15, 60, 360 or 1440 minutes).
- 08Monitors are created up to your plan's limit; the rest stay listed in the preview so nothing is lost silently.
Pricing
A free plan covers 15 uptime monitors at 1-minute checks and 32 blacklist monitors checked daily; Professional is $9.95 a month for 30 uptime monitors, Business $19.95 for 60 and Enterprise $49.95 for 200, with blacklist plans priced separately from $9.95.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 HetrixTools monitors. Hear about the next outage first.
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