I am sure you will agree with me when I say:
Pingdom is a great tool. But it’s expensive and comes with limited options in terms of features and customer support.
Well, it turns out, there are many tools (aka Pingdom alternatives) that are cheaper, have more features than Pingdom and are easier to use.
And in today’s post, I am going to show you some of the best Pingdom alternatives that are the perfect fit for your needs.
Top 12 Pingdom AlternativesPingdom Alternative No.1: Better Uptime
BetterUptime is as you might guess by the name, monitors and improves your uptime numbers when you’re busy managing other aspects of your site. BetterUptime is massively popular among e-store owners who are otherwise consumed with inventory management.
The signup is pretty simple. Just input your Email & phone and the URL of the site you want monitored. That’s it. Now, every time there is an update on your site or if it goes down, you will receive the update first hand.
If anything goes wrong on BetterUptime’s watch, you will receive screenshots & error logs with detailed timelines for easy debugging. BetterUptime also supports external service integration like Heroku, Slack, Zendesk, etc along with calendar integration for on-call duty rotations.
AND they added some new features like advanced escalation policies, organize monitors into groups, region-based monitoring, and a user-agent protocol that can integrate into your firewall which allows seamless interaction between their servers and improves analytical data.
Now, to talk about pricing, there is one good news: A free plan. A free plan with limited features like free Email alerts, 3-minute checks, and 5 phone calls. After that, there’s the ‘Freelancer’ plan with unlimited phone calls, 30-second checks and a single-user account.
Moving to the high-tier plans, ‘Team’ has 5 user accounts, on-call scheduling, semi-pro support, and about unlimited integrations. If these don’t fit your scale, the ‘Enterprise’ plan is $150/month & comes with the best support, and option to add additional users.
What I like about Better Uptime:
- Unlimited Email alerts in all plans
- Incident escalation
Pingdom Alternative No.2: Dotcom-Monitor
Dotcom-Monitor is an all-in-one cloud-based monitoring platform that lets you control & track services such as SOAP, GET, POST, TCP, ICMP & SSL Certificates for uptime management, performance monitoring and added functionality for agencies & enterprises.
Its dashboard offers a uniform reporting system, you can detailed alerts when an error is detected, flexible XML reporting service that feeds APIs into your real-time monitoring data, integration with popular platforms and even monitors sites/apps outside of your network.
The pricing model has been kept as moderate as possible too. The basic plan starts as $1.99/month that offers a minimum of 10 targets. Every plan includes unlimited public dashboards, SSO Integration, configuration API, XML data feed, 24/7 support, etc.
Not only that but Dotcom-Monitor has also been credited to be the first company to introduce one-minute monitoring, monitor IPv6 & phone alerts, image match transaction monitoring, and WYSIWYG application monitoring script recorder.
What I like about Dotcom-Monitor:
- No obligations/No credit card required 30-day free trial
- Live XML data reporting service
Pingdom Alternative No.3: HetrixTools
HetrixTools is our third most preferred monitoring service. Its main focus is being simple, fast, and intuitive while also delivering clear and concise results to the users.
Scaling up while you grow is a no problem along with being updated with new features and tools.
The best features of HetrixTools are Uptime monitoring, Blacklist monitoring and checking. They have 12 global monitoring locations, public status pages with detailed stats, server status monitor, SSL monitor, outage diagnostics for post analysis, sub-accounts and the list goes on.
There is a free plan that you can check out here.
If anything comes up, you’ll be notified via email or any other preferred medium.
What I like about HetrixTools:
- 1 Minute checkup frequency on all plans (including free plan)
- Domain Expiration Monitoring
- SSL Expiration Monitoring
- Huge number of integration
Pingdom Alternative No.4: Sematext
Sematext hails itself as a rather unique kind of monitoring software. Whereas most services offer monitoring tools in a narrow sense, Sematext combines all the aspects of performance monitoring. The end result is a great devops tool that features:
- End to end visibility and observability
- Real-time alerts and debugging solutions
- Support for all major frameworks
- Very well documented features
Combining all the best aspects also means simplified usage with components like Logs for easy analytics and log management, Infrastructure Monitoring for keeping track of every activity in your infrastructure from one place, Synthetics for managing APIs, etc.
The pricing is kept modest as well. The Basic Plan is free and offers 500MB worth of data for monitoring and features like Elasticsearch API, Unlimited Users, Monitoring Integration, etc.
Logs cost $50/month, Monitoring costs $0.007/hour, the Experience pack starts at $9/month, and Synthetics cost $2/monitor.
That is the base pricing so better check out their full plans first and before going for paid you can check out their free plan here. All their products come with a Free trial that allows you dive deep into all the features Sematext has to offer without spending a dime.
Pingdom Alternative No.5: Upmon:
Upmon is a minimalist kind of monitoring service. You can say that it lacks features compared to a lot of other names on this list. But Upmon’s true strength is its simplicity. Even when you visit their website, everything is available right on the homepage.
Now, on to the features, Upmon surveils your website on a one-minute basis, it creates graphs based on your past uptime and performance to detect recurring trends, advanced logistics to traceroute an error, and data sharing tools like a public page or a custom banner.
If anything goes wrong on your server, you can get instant updates over email, SMS, or the Telegram App. Also, official support for Android and iOS to know the current status of your website when you’re away from the computer.
For pricing, you get 2 choices: Try it free for 30 days with 5 monitors, Unlimited SMS/Call, and Unlimited Status Pages or you can pay by the dollar with a slider to choose the amount of monitors you want which goes up to 100 monitors for $100/month.
As simple as that.
If you aren’t thinking of running the next Google or Facebook and looking for something simple then definitely check out Upmon for a free trial.
Pingdom Alternatives No.6: ManageEngine Applications Manager:
ManageEngine Applications Manager is a comprehensive monitoring solution that allows you to monitor and troubleshoot application and infrastructure performance issues alongside your websites. It helps IT operations and DevOps teams stay on top of outages and performance problems and isolate the root cause of issues quickly.
Applications Manager offers a few different options to monitor websites and web applications, ranging from simple website monitoring to more complex synthetic web transaction monitoring. It enables you to understand how users navigate through your website—from around the world, measure and monitor critical performance metrics, ensure your websites don’t undergo unsolicited changes, and single out erroneous elements without breaking a sweat.
You can also monitor servers, databases, cloud infrastructure such as Amazon EC2, containers, Kubernetes, web servers such as Apache and IIS as well as services such as SOAP, HTTP, HTTPS, DNS, etc. Furthermore, it offers agent-based application performance monitoring with byte-code instrumentation and code-level diagnostics for Java, .NET, PHP, Node.js and Ruby applications.
Applications Manager offers a full-fledged 30-day free trial. Pricing plans start @$945/year for monitoring up to 25 websites, applications or server instances.
Pingdom Alternatives No.7: ServiceUptime:
ServiceUptime allows you to monitor your website from 10 different locations around the world. They have customizable monitoring frequencies from as low as 1 minute to 60 minutes. It features a number of different monitoring services such as HTTP, HTTPS, ICMP, FTP, DNS, POP3 etc.
What makes ServiceUptime a great monitoring tool is a fact that each time your service is checked from a different location, and an alert is generated only when multiple locations detect a failure.
If you need to trigger scripts on your website (webhooks) for special conditions such as downtime, then ServiceUptime is a great tool to consider. All premium plans of ServiceUptime support the use of Webhooks.
ServiceUptime has free and paid monitoring that you can choose from. The free monitoring service allows you to monitor one service every 30 or 60 minutes; while the paid services ranges from 10 monitors to 110 monitors depending on the plan chosen.
What I like about ServiceUptime:
- Flexible Frequency options.
- Ability to choose any ports under Free plan
Pingdom Alternatives No.8: Uptime.com
Uptime.com not only monitors your server’s uptime but also provides sever performance reports. This has an unlimited capacity to monitor websites and can monitor HTTP, HTTPS, Ping, SSH, TCP, DNS, API, transactions, emails and many more.
Uptime.com does continuous monitoring in a span of one minute from 30 different locations. In case it encounters any website glitches, then you receive on-demand alerts. These alerts are sent via SMS, email, push notification, Twitter or webhooks.
This has a 21-day free trial. Post this there are multiple plans, with the most basic plan starting at $15/month.
All plans include SSL monitoring, 24/7 support, ping monitoring, virus, and malware scanning, and real user monitoring.
Uptime.com provides comprehensive reporting data with server performance, response time and actual uptime. You can check website uptime history and can get daily, weekly and monthly reports over email.
With each plan, you also get a public status page which can be displayed internally or on a public portal. Uptime.com’s basic plan provides 4-month retention of historical data. Uptime also supports third-party integrations. These services are combined with good technical support guides over its help section.
What I like about Uptime.com:
- Alerts via Twitter
- Monitors DNS, Mails server, web server, and supports IP and domain blacklisting
Pingdom Alternatives No.9: RapidSpike
RapidSpike is yet another solution to monitor the uptime of your website. This comes with a 14-day free trial. It has an automated and continuous uptime monitoring service.
With RapidSpike you can add new websites or servers instantaneously for monitoring. It has constant 24//7/365 notifications and you will be immediately notified in case of any downtime.
There is a number of ways, RapidSpike sends a notification. It can send notifications via email, SMS, voice call, webhooks, Slack channels, pushover, Microsoft teams or office 365, PagerDuty, app messaging or public status page.
RapidSpike can run at an interval of 1 minute and if you want it at a longer duration then this is configurable.
RapidSpike has round the globe support and ensures to check across multiple locations before sending any downtime notification. The services are combined with multiple notification rules. This is useful when there are multiple stakeholders with different interests.
This is equally accessible via desktop, tablet, mobile or any other device. It has a consolidated view available over the dashboard which provides relevant uptime metrics.
RapidSpike has detailed reporting including tracking of every page. At the same time, it would send a single notification in case there are multiple page failures. It can monitor ping, HTTP and TCP.
What I like about RapidSpike.com:
- A large number of notification channels
- Supports API monitoring, security vulnerability scans, and real user monitoring
Pingdom Alternatives No.10: SiteUptime:
SiteUptime monitors your website every two minutes from 8 different locations spread across 5 continents. It features multiple monitoring options such as HTTP, HTTPS, DNS, ICMP, POP3, etc.
SiteUptime avoids false positives by confirming the alert from an alternate geographical location.
If you’re considering trying a free website monitoring tool before moving to a paid option, SiteUptime is a great choice. The free plan allows you to setup one monitor that checks your website every 30 minutes. It also includes uptime reports, email alerts and a control panel. The advanced plans allow you to setup upto six monitors that check your website every 2 minutes.
What I like about SiteUptime:
- Monitoring stats via XML/RSS
Pingdom Alternatives No.11: Host Tracker:
Host Tracker isn’t just about content monitoring and response time check. They also include database monitoring.
Host Tracker monitors your website from more than 70 locations around the world using multiple protocols such as HTTP, HTTPS, ICMP, FTP, SSH, RDP, etc.
Host Tracker’s got more than just email, SMS and phone call to get you alerted. You can also choose to get alerted over Hangouts and Skype.
In addition to web monitoring, Host Tracker also allows you to monitor the load on your CPU, HDD and RAM; and certificate expiration.
Reports can be downloaded in different formats such as PDF, XML, and CSV.
You can integrate your own application with Host Tracker using their API.
Host Trackers’ stats certainly make it an option to consider: 8 years on air, 40000+ customers and 200000+ monitored websites.
What I like about Host Tracker:
- Huge alert options including via Hangouts, Skype and Voice Call
- Tracking for Black listed domain/IP possible
Pingdom Alternatives No.12: Site 24×7
Site24x7 is an all-in-one solution that allows you to monitor not just your website, but also your mobile website, mobile apps and cloud assets running on Amazon EC2.
A recent report from Fortune states that mobile traffic is set to grow at a compounded annual rate of 53% from 2015 to 2020. This reinforces the importance of monitoring your mobile websites and mobile apps.
Site24x7 monitors services such as HTTP, HTTPS, ICMP, DNS, FTP, etc. from over 50 locations around the world. It also features real-time user monitoring with metrics such as browser type, location, and platform.
What more? Site24x7 also features server performance monitoring and network monitoring. It monitors servers such as Windows, Linux, Amazon EC2 and VMware ESX; and network devices such as routers, switches, firewalls, and printers.
Site24x7 should be your choice if you’re looking for more than just website monitoring; like monitoring your mobile applications, application performance, server performance and network performance.
What I like about Site24x7:
- Can monitor Cloud infrastructure such as Amazon EC2
- Mobile application monitoring & application performance monitoring for Java,.NET, AWS, Azure, iOS & Android Environments
Pingdom Alternatives: Summary
| Better Uptime |
Dotcom Monitor |
HetrixTools | Sematext | Upmon | Service Uptime |
Uptime | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HTTP | Yes | – | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| HTTPS | Yes | – | Yes | – | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| GET/POST | Yes | – | – | – | – | – | |
| SMTP | – | – | – | – | – | – | |
| SOAP | – | Yes | – | – | – | – | – |
| TCP | – | Yes | – | Yes | Yes | – | Yes |
| ICMP | – | Yes | – | – | Yes | Yes | – |
| SSL | – | Yes | – | – | – | – | – |
| FTP | – | – | – | – | – | Yes | – |
| DNS | – | – | – | – | – | Yes | Yes |
| POP3 | – | – | – | – | – | – | |
| Ping | – | – | – | – | – | Yes | |
| SSH | – | – | – | – | – | – | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes | Yes | – | – | Yes | |
| Free Plan Available? |
Unlimited | 10 monitor | 15 monitor | No | Yes | 20 monitor | 20 monitor |
| Monitor Frequency |
3 min | 1-5 min | 1 min | 10 sec | 1 min | up to 3 min | 1 min |
| Alerts via | Email SMS Call |
Email SMS |
Email SMS Call |
Email SMS |
Email SMS |
Email SMS Call |
Email SMS Call |
The alternatives mentioned here give you a number of different choices for monitoring your websites.
The choices differ not only in terms of cost, but also in terms of services that can be monitored, the number of locations, reporting formats and metrics, and alerting mechanisms.
Consider Better Uptime while making your choice for a website monitoring tool because it has great features compared to others.
Please comment below and let me know which one you chose.
Good luck!
