hostnag vs UptimeRobot
UptimeRobot is a fast, well-established way to get HTTP, port, keyword, ICMP ping and heartbeat monitoring running in minutes, with a generous free tier, a mobile app and a public API. One timeline of what will break (certificates, domains, mail setup) and what is broken, with 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
UptimeRobot read from its public documentation on 2026-09-15. Tell us if it changed.| What breaks | UptimeRobot | hostnag |
|---|---|---|
| A host goes downwebsite, API, VPN, mail, gateway | Yes | Yes |
| A certificate expiresdays-before thresholds, daily inside the last window | Yes | Yes |
| UptimeRobot: SSL expiry alerts with configurable thresholds; combined with domain expiry on the same monitor. | ||
| A domain lapsesregistration expiry from RDAP | Yes | Yes |
| UptimeRobot: The pricing page lists "SSL & Domain expiration" and the SSL monitoring page advertises "SSL and domain expiry alerts". | ||
| A certificate is swappedfingerprint changed, wrong host, chain not trusted | Unknown | Yes |
| UptimeRobot: The help article describes an SSL error as expired, invalid or misconfigured, without stating whether a fingerprint, hostname or chain change is detected. | ||
| A DNS record driftsexpected answer missing or changed | Yes | Yes |
| UptimeRobot: DNS monitoring compares records against the expected values you configure and alerts when a record is modified, added or deleted. | ||
| 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 |
| UptimeRobot: No combined external-check-plus-internal-confirmation monitor is documented 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 | No | Yes |
| UptimeRobot: UptimeRobot's own writeup says SMTP monitoring checks only server availability, not spam filtering or inbox delivery; there is no SPF, DKIM, DMARC or blocklist check. | ||
| A scheduled job stops runningcron, backups, workers: a heartbeat that goes quiet | Yes | Yes |
| UptimeRobot: Cron-job (heartbeat) monitoring expects a periodic ping and marks the job down if it stops arriving on time. | ||
| Your nameservers or registrar changenameservers, registrar, DNSSEC, certificate issuer, DNS answers, redirect targets | Partly | Yes |
| UptimeRobot: DNS monitoring tracks NS record changes and DNSSEC (DS, DNSKEY) records, but nothing documents a registrar change, certificate issuer change or redirect-target drift. | ||
| 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 UptimeRobot has that we don't
- A mobile app (iOS and Android) with push notifications and a status widget.
- A public REST API (v3) for managing monitors, status pages and maintenance windows.
- Screenshot-based website change monitoring that alerts on a visual difference.
Switching
- 01Paste a read-only UptimeRobot API key (Settings, API Settings) in the import dialog; it is used once to fetch monitors and never stored.
- 02HTTP, keyword and port monitors carry over with their type, target and keyword mode.
- 03Heartbeat (cron-job) monitors get a new hostnag ping URL to point the job at after the import.
- 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
A free tier covers 50 monitors on a 5-minute interval; paid plans start at $12 a month (Solo, billed yearly) for 60-second checks, rising to $79 a month (Scale) and custom Enterprise pricing.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.- https://uptimerobot.com/pricing/
- https://uptimerobot.com/ssl-monitoring/
- https://help.uptimerobot.com/en/articles/11358746-monitor-ssl-certificate-expiration-errors-with-uptimerobot
- https://uptimerobot.com/dns-monitoring/
- https://help.uptimerobot.com/en/articles/11358441-monitor-types
- https://uptimerobot.com/blog/understanding-smtp-monitoring/
- https://uptimerobot.com/mobile-app/
- https://uptimerobot.com/api/
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