hostnag vs Uptime.com

Uptime.com is a mid-market monitor with an unusually wide check list: HTTP, ping, TCP, UDP, DNS, SSL, WHOIS and RDAP domain expiry, domain blacklist, mail protocols, heartbeats, transactions, RUM, page speed and a Cloud Status check that reads 1,200 vendors' status pages. The mail records beside the blocklists, a link check confirmed from inside, and a free tier for five hosts.

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

Side by side

Uptime.com read from its public documentation on 2026-09-17. Tell us if it changed.
What breaks, and whether Uptime.com or hostnag covers it
What breaksUptime.comhostnag
A host goes downYesYes
Uptime.com: HTTP(S), ping, TCP, UDP, DNS, SSH, FTP, NTP and mail protocol checks at intervals from 1 to 60 minutes.
A certificate expiresYesYes
Uptime.com: An SSL Certificate Expiry check with a before-expiry-days setting.
A domain lapsesYesYes
Uptime.com: WHOIS and RDAP checks alert a set number of days before the domain expires, polled once a day.
A certificate is swappedUnknownYes
Uptime.com: The SSL check is documented as an expiry check; nothing says whether a fingerprint, hostname or chain change is detected.
A DNS record driftsYesYes
Uptime.com: The DNS check monitors "for DNS failures or changes".
An ISP link dropsUnknownYes
Uptime.com: Ping checks watch a public address from outside; nothing documents an inside confirmation for an office or ISP link.hostnag: outside and inside
Mail stops being deliveredPartlyYes
Uptime.com: A Domain Blacklist check against about 100 lists and SMTP, IMAP and POP reachability checks; nothing documents SPF, DKIM or DMARC checks.
Someone issues a certificate for your domainUnknownYes
Uptime.com: No certificate transparency log watch is documented among the checks.
A scheduled job stops runningYesYes
Uptime.com: Heartbeat checks alert when a heartbeat is not detected; webhook checks alert when an action occurs.
Your nameservers or registrar changePartlyYes
Uptime.com: The DNS check alerts on changes; the WHOIS check documents expiry and registration information, not an alert on a registrar change.
A vendor you depend on has an incidentYesYes
Uptime.com: A Cloud Status check reads the status page of any of 1,200+ vendors, down to a component, and shows their incidents.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 Uptime.com has that we don't

  • Cloud Status checks covering 1,200+ vendors and their components, beside hostnag's five status page products.
  • Transaction checks in a headless browser, real user monitoring and page speed audits.
  • Malware and virus checks against the Google and Yandex Safe Browsing lists, and SSH, FTP, SFTP, NTP and UDP checks.

Switching

  1. 01List your checks from the Uptime.com API; each is one row.
  2. 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.
  3. 03HTTP(S) checks become http, TCP checks tcp, DNS checks dns with their record_type, SSL checks tls_cert, WHOIS and RDAP checks domain_registration; heartbeat checks become heartbeats with a new hostnag ping URL to point the job at.
  4. 04Ping (ICMP) monitors carry over as Ping monitors, run from hostnag's own probes.
  5. 05Domain Blacklist checks become a mail monitor on the domain, and Cloud Status checks become vendor status monitors if the vendor's page is Statuspage, Instatus, Better Stack, incident.io or status.io; add those from the wizard rather than the CSV.
  6. 06Transaction, RUM, page speed, malware, UDP, SSH, FTP and NTP checks have no counterpart in hostnag.
  7. 07Check intervals snap up to the nearest hostnag preset (1, 5, 15, 60, 360 or 1440 minutes).
  8. 08Monitors are created up to your plan's limit; the rest stay listed in the preview so nothing is lost silently.

Pricing

Website monitoring starts at $9 a month on a usage calculator (yearly billing saves 20%); there is no free tier, and new accounts get a 30-day guarantee.

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

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

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

Sources

Read on 2026-09-17.

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