hostnag vs Pingdom
Pingdom is a long-established uptime monitor that adds real user monitoring and page-speed tracking for teams that already watch performance alongside availability. What will break next (certificates, domains, mail setup) on the same timeline as what is down now.
14 days of Pro to start, then free for 20 hosts. No card, nothing to install.
Side by side
Pingdom read from its public documentation on 2026-09-15. Tell us if it changed.| What breaks | Pingdom | hostnag |
|---|---|---|
| A host goes downwebsite, API, VPN, mail, gateway | Yes | Yes |
| A certificate expiresdays-before thresholds, daily inside the last window | Yes | Yes |
| Pingdom: Enabling HTTPS on an uptime check turns on certificate error and expiry alerts, with a configurable advance-notice window. | ||
| A domain lapsesregistration expiry from RDAP | Unknown | Yes |
| Pingdom: The SSL monitoring page covers certificate expiry only and does not mention domain (WHOIS) registration expiry anywhere. | ||
| A certificate is swappedfingerprint changed, wrong host, chain not trusted | Unknown | Yes |
| Pingdom: The SSL monitoring page documents expiry and certificate errors broadly, without stating whether a fingerprint, hostname or chain change is detected. | ||
| A DNS record driftsexpected answer missing or changed | Unknown | Yes |
| Pingdom: The check-types documentation describes the DNS check as making sure a DNS server is working; it does not document comparing a record against an expected value. | ||
| 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 |
| Pingdom: No combined external-check-plus-internal-confirmation monitor for an office or ISP link is documented.hostnag: external and internal | ||
| Mail stops being deliveredMX, SPF, DKIM, DMARC and blocklists, at the expiry cadence of your plan | No | Yes |
| Pingdom: The check-types documentation says SMTP, POP3(S) and IMAP(S) checks "do not actually send test emails but really just verify that the email server responds"; there is no SPF, DKIM, DMARC or blocklist check. | ||
| A scheduled job stops runningcron, backups, workers: a heartbeat that goes quiet | Unknown | Yes |
| Pingdom: The check-types documentation lists HTTP(S), HTTP Custom, Ping, TCP, UDP, DNS and mail-protocol checks; it does not document a push or heartbeat check for scheduled jobs. | ||
| Your nameservers or registrar changenameservers, registrar, DNSSEC, certificate issuer, DNS answers, redirect targets | Unknown | Yes |
| Pingdom: No nameserver, registrar, DNSSEC or redirect-target change tracking is documented among the monitor types. | ||
| A vendor you depend on has an incidenttheir status page read for an outage or degraded state, the incident named | Unknown | Yes |
| 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 Pingdom has that we don't
- iOS and Android mobile apps with push notifications and root-cause analysis.
- A public REST API for reading check status and building graphs.
- UDP checks, beside the TCP port check.
- Real user monitoring (page views, load performance) alongside synthetic checks.
Switching
- 01Paste a Pingdom API token (My Account, Pingdom API) in the import dialog; it is used once and never stored.
- 02HTTP checks (with their contains or does-not-contain string) carry over as http monitors; TCP and DNS checks carry over with their port and target.
- 03SMTP, POP3 and IMAP checks become TCP port monitors on the mail protocol's default port.
- 04Ping (ICMP) monitors carry over as Ping monitors, run from hostnag's own probes.
- 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
Pricing is usage-based on a subscription calculator (number of uptime checks and real-user-monitoring page views) with no published flat tiers; a free trial is offered, but there is no free tier.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 2026-09-15.Bring your Pingdom monitors. Hear about the next outage first.
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