hostnag vs StatusCake
StatusCake is a long-established uptime monitor with HTTP, TCP, DNS, SMTP, SSH, PING and PUSH tests from 30 countries, page speed, SSL, domain and server monitoring, a free tier and MSP reseller plans. DNS and the whole mail setup beside certificates and domains, and a failure confirmed from a second location before anyone is paged.
14 days of Pro to start, then free for 20 hosts. No card, nothing to install.
Side by side
StatusCake read from its public documentation on 2026-09-17. Tell us if it changed.| What breaks | StatusCake | hostnag |
|---|---|---|
| A host goes downwebsite, API, VPN, mail, gateway | Yes | Yes |
| StatusCake: HTTP, HEAD, TCP, DNS, SMTP, SSH, PING and PUSH tests from over 30 countries, as often as every 30 seconds. | ||
| A certificate expiresdays-before thresholds, daily inside the last window | Yes | Yes |
| StatusCake: Alerts 1, 14 and 30 days before expiry, with an SSL score and mixed content alerts. | ||
| A domain lapsesregistration expiry from RDAP | Yes | Yes |
| StatusCake: Domain monitoring with expiration alerts and custom reminders, read from WHOIS. | ||
| A certificate is swappedfingerprint changed, wrong host, chain not trusted | Unknown | Yes |
| StatusCake: The SSL page promises an alert "if anything is wrong" and a score; nothing states whether a fingerprint, hostname or chain change is detected. | ||
| A DNS record driftsexpected answer missing or changed | Yes | Yes |
| StatusCake: Record rules on a domain monitor: "if they change and the rules are broken, we'll let you know." | ||
| 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 |
| StatusCake: PING tests watch a public address externally; nothing documents an internal confirmation for an office or ISP link.hostnag: external and internal | ||
| Mail stops being deliveredMX, SPF, DKIM, DMARC and blocklists, at the expiry cadence of your plan | Partly | Yes |
| StatusCake: Blacklist monitoring of the domain on 8 lists, and an SMTP reachability test; nothing documents SPF, DKIM or DMARC checks. | ||
| A scheduled job stops runningcron, backups, workers: a heartbeat that goes quiet | Yes | Yes |
| StatusCake: A PUSH test type is listed among the uptime test types. | ||
| Your nameservers or registrar changenameservers, registrar, DNSSEC, certificate issuer, DNS answers, redirect targets | Partly | Yes |
| StatusCake: Domain record rules and WHOIS data capture; nothing documents alerting on 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 |
| StatusCake: 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 StatusCake has that we don't
- Page speed monitoring from several locations, and server monitoring of CPU, RAM and disk on Linux.
- Free SMS credits every month, phone alerts, white-label reporting and a Terraform provider.
- Checks as often as every 30 seconds on Business, against hostnag's one-minute floor.
Switching
- 01List your uptime tests from the StatusCake API (or the knowledge base's "Exporting uptime test settings"); 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 and HEAD tests become http, TCP tests tcp, DNS tests dns with their record_type, SMTP and SSH tests tcp on their port; SSL tests become tls_cert and domain tests domain_registration rows; PUSH tests 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.
- 05Page speed and server monitors have no counterpart in hostnag.
- 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 plan covers 10 uptime monitors at 5-minute checks plus one domain, one SSL and one page speed monitor; Superior is $20.41 a month billed annually ($24.49 monthly) for 100 monitors at 1 minute, Business $66.66 ($79.99) for 300 at 30 seconds, and Enterprise is custom.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 2026-09-17.Bring your StatusCake monitors. Hear about the next outage first.
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