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. One timeline of what will break (certificates, domains, DNS, the whole mail setup) and what is broken, with a failure confirmed from a second location before anyone is paged.
Free for five 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 inside the site | Unknown | Yes |
| StatusCake: PING tests 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 |
| StatusCake: Blacklist monitoring of the domain on 8 lists, and an SMTP reachability test; nothing documents SPF, DKIM or DMARC checks. | ||
| Someone issues a certificate for your domainnew certificates in the transparency logs, daily | Unknown | Yes |
| StatusCake: No certificate transparency log watch is documented. | ||
| 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/ 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 StatusCake monitors. Hear about the next outage first.
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