Our Guide to the 6 Best Pingdom Alternatives

Pingdom is a trusted choice in the website monitoring space, but it’s not the only tool out there. Users often look for alternatives that offer different features or more cost-effective pricing.

Not sure what you’re looking for? Don’t worry—we’ve tested tons of Pingdom alternatives over the years and in this Instatus guide we’ll be introducing you to six of our favorites.

Read on to take your monitoring to the next level.

What Is Pingdom?

Pingdom is a popular, cloud-based website monitoring service that allows you to monitor your websites, APIs, and applications. It sends you notifications when issues arise—giving you the ability to manage downtime and keep an eye on performance.

Pingdom’s UI is simple and clean, with dashboards highlighting key performance indicators (KPIs) and real-time analytics. It also comes with plenty of powerful features such as uptime monitoring, page speed testing, detailed reports, custom alerts, and more.

But Pingdom isn’t a perfect tool—let’s check out some of the main reasons why users look for alternatives.

Why Do People Look for Pingdom Alternatives?

Cost Concerns

Some users find Pingdom's pricing less budget-friendly as their web infrastructure scales or when they require numerous monitoring checks. They seek alternatives that offer cost-effective solutions without compromising on functionality.

Limited Monitoring Locations

Pingdom may have a limited number of monitoring locations compared to some alternatives. Users looking for a more comprehensive global or diverse monitoring network explore other solutions to ensure comprehensive website performance monitoring across various regions.

Advanced Features and Customization

Users with specific monitoring needs, such as transaction monitoring, API monitoring, or in-depth customizations, may find Pingdom lacking in these advanced features. They turn to alternatives that offer more extensive capabilities tailored to their requirements.

Data Privacy and Security

Organizations with strict data privacy and security requirements may find Pingdom's data handling practices inadequate. These users opt for alternatives that provide better control over data storage and transmission to ensure compliance with regulations.

Criteria To Consider When Choosing Pingdom Alternatives

Features

Evaluate whether the alternative offers all the necessary features, balancing functionality and usability. Ensure the reporting features are reliable and customizable.

Ease of Use & Value 

The tool should be intuitive for tech-savvy and non-tech-savvy users. Consider whether it provides value for money based on its features and pricing.

Integrations & Third-Party Tools

Check if the alternative integrates seamlessly with other third-party services and tools in your technology stack. This integration capability reduces manual work and enhances efficiency.

Ease of Implementation

Rapid deployment is a significant advantage, particularly for organizations that aim to start using the tool quickly. Consider the implementation process and any associated complexities.

Reporting

Robust reporting capabilities are essential for understanding network activity and diagnosing issues. Ensure the alternative provides comprehensive reporting features and dashboards.

Scalability

Choose a solution that can scale as your organization grows. Scalability is crucial for accommodating evolving network requirements.

DDoS Protection

Effective network monitoring tools should include DDoS attack detection features. Early detection is key to mitigating the impact of DDoS attacks and protecting sensitive assets.

6 Best Pingdom Alternatives

Here’s a list of our top picks for Pingdom alternatives:

1. Instatus
2. Better Stack
3. Uptime.com
4. HetrixTools
5. New Relic
6. Checkly

Let’s dive into the tools.

1. Instatus

Instatus is an all-in-one platform designed to create status pages and monitor websites or apps for downtimes and performance issues. It helps with automated incident management, maintenance scheduling, issue tracking, and incident reporting.

Instatus is capable of monitoring HTTP/HTTPS URLs, APIs, Ping, TCP, keyword, and DNS from multiple locations globally. Instatus also offers real-time alerts through multiple channels, ensuring you stay informed about critical issues and can resolve them promptly.

Relevant Features

• Monitoring types: Keep track of any issue that bugs down the performance of your online assets with our website, API, keyword, SSL, TCP, ping, and DNS checks. Receive real-time updates every 30 seconds from multiple locations around the world.
• Alerts & notifications: Receive alerts through various communication channels (Email, SMS, Phone calls, Slack, Discord, MS Teams, Google Chat) when incidents happen.
• Integrated status page:  Highlight the stability of your website while keeping your customers and team members in the loop about any maintenance or downtime.
• Multi-language support: Create a status page your customers can understand with 21 languages supported.
• Monitoring integrations: Integrate with several other platforms that your organization is already using, including Checkly,  Pingdom, Datadog, New Relic, and more.
• Customization & branding: Match your brand’s unique feel and look with highly customizable status pages.

Pricing

Instatus offers a free Starter plan with 5 team members and 200 subscribers. Pro ($15/month) supports unlimited teams and unlimited subscribers, 50 monitors, 30-second checks, and 10 on-call team members.

Business ($225/month) features 1,000 monitors, SMS & phone alerts, 50 on-call team members, and unlimited status page subscribers, ideal for larger organizations.

We also offer a customizable Enterprise plan.

2. Better Stack

Better Stack is an all-in-one platform that covers your needs for log management, uptime monitoring, incident management, and status pages.

It offers core features like uptime monitoring, instant alerts via email and popular messaging platforms, and customizable status pages. Better Stack’s embeddable system status notice keeps your customers informed about incidents right on your website, eliminating the need to be redirected to a separate status page.

Relevant Features

• Log management: Aggregate all logs from your servers, apps, containers, clusters, and cloud providers in one place and search them in real-time.
• Incident management:  Get a detailed timeline and all the debug data for every incident to allow your team to identify and resolve the root cause.
• On-call schedule calendar:  Integrate your infrastructure monitoring services and get the right people alerted for critical issues.
• Public Status page: Get a branded status page on your own sub-domain to keep your customers informed about your website’s uptime/downtime.
• Cron Job monitoring: Monitor CRON jobs and serverless workers to ensure they run correctly.

Pricing

Better Stack offers four separate plans for their Logs and Uptime Monitoring tools. For Logs, there is a Basic (free) plan that offers 1 GB per month and 3-day retention. Paid plans:  Freelancer ($25/month), Small Team ($85/month), and Business ($170/month) all come with increasing log storage, data retention, and team members.

For their Uptime monitoring, Basic (free) comes with free email alerts, 3-minute checks, and 10 monitors. Freelance ($25/month), Small Team ($85/month),  and Business ($170/month) include unlimited phone call alerts, 30-second checks, and 50 - 1000  monitors.

All plans come with a 60-day money-back guarantee.

Pros

• HTTP(s), Ping, Port, DNS, SSL & TLD expiration, Cron jobs checks
• Easy on-call scheduling & incident management
• Unlimited phone call alerts

Cons

• Complex user interface
• Log alerts don't send the actual content of the triggering log entry
• Bugs and glitches when integrating with Microsoft Teams

3. Uptime.com 

Uptime.com offers basic website availability checks. It helps you monitor critical site issues and performance concerns.

You can download reports to share with your team or management, which provide valuable insights for diagnosing problems. Additionally, you can create public status pages and widgets to keep your site visitors informed about any issues.

Relevant Features

• Website monitoring: Monitor your website, network, and email performance from multiple locations.
• Downtime incident alerts: Immediately send an alert via email, SMS, or push notifications.
• Advanced monitoring checks: Monitor the performance of your system and identify problems that may be affecting your users using transaction monitoring, API monitoring, and real user monitoring.
• App integrations: Integrate with other tools and services, such as Slack, PagerDuty, and Microsoft Teams.

Pricing

Uptime.com offers a 14-day full-featured free trial.

Paid plans include Starter ($20/month), Essential ($67/month), and Premium ($379/month). There’s also a Custom Plan that starts at $599/month.

Pros

• Easy to use
• Affordable pricing plans
• Extensive monitoring features

Cons

• Limited customization options
• False alarms
• Poor customer support

4. HetrixTools

Hextrix Tools is a user-friendly online platform providing businesses with website and blacklist monitoring services.

It helps users keep track of the performance and availability of their website and whether it's been blacklisted by any major search engines.

Relevant Features

• Uptime monitoring: Monitor your website or server for network issues or outages from 12 locations worldwide.
• Blacklist monitoring: Scan your website, IPs, or domains for blacklists against various blacklists, including Spamhaus, DNSBL, and SURBL.
• Real-time alerts: Send alerts to multiple people via email, SMS, or push notifications. Escalate alerts if they are not resolved within a certain period of time.
• Maintenance mode: Power off or reboot your servers from time to time without having to pause website monitoring.

Pricing

Hextrix Tools offers two sets of pricing plans for their Uptime Monitoring and Blacklist Monitoring products. Both include a free forever plan with limited monitoring services and checkup frequency.

Uptime Monitor Pricing

Hextrix offers three paid plans for Uptime Monitoring—Professional ($9.95/month), Business ($19.95/month), and Enterprise ($49.95/month).

Blacklist Monitor Pricing

Hextrix has four paid plans for Blacklist Monitoring—Personal ($9.95/month), Professional ($9.95/month), Business ($19.95/month), and Enterprise ($49.95/month).

Pros

• Several available locations
• Affordable pricing
• Comprehensive features for website monitoring and blacklist monitoring

Cons

• Status page needs improvement
• Lacks support for advanced queries/API calls against hosts
• Limited configuration options for SMS notifications

5. New Relic 

New Relic is a comprehensive platform that monitors the health and availability of your applications.

It provides real-time performance insights—from the customer’s browser to the server infrastructure—that help you pinpoint bottlenecks and improve your entire stack.  New Relic One supports monitoring for various web and mobile applications, including Ruby, PHP, .Net, Java, Python, and Android apps.

Relevant Features

• Application monitoring: Monitor application performance, errors, and user experience.
• Log management: View and manage application, network, and server logs.
• Infrastructure monitoring: Monitor infrastructure like databases and servers.
• Session replay: Debug with video-like playback and enhance digital experiences.
• Integrations: Integrate with hundreds of popular services and tools—including Instatus.

Pricing

New Relic offers a free forever plan with unlimited basic users and ping monitors.

Standard, Pro, and Enterprise plans provide ticketed support availability, critical initial support response, and other advanced monitoring features. You’ll need to contact sales for a personalized quote for Standard, Pro, and Enterprise plans.

Pros

• Customizable monitoring dashboards to match specific requirements
• Accurate and reliable alerts
• User-friendly interface

Cons

• Higher storage costs
• Some pages may have slower processing times
• Challenges in reviewing logs during correlation processes

6. Checkly 

Checkly is a platform that helps users monitor their websites and respond to errors or outages by combining end-to-end testing and active monitoring.

It lets users monitor the status and performance of their API endpoints and important website transactions using a single, intuitive dashboard. Users can also add teammates, call checks from their CI/CD pipeline, publish a status page under a custom domain, and perform SSL expiry checks with Checkly.

Relevant Features

• Code-based monitoring: Combine end-to-end testing and monitoring in one developer-focused monitoring as a code (MaC) workflow.
• API monitoring: Check your mobile, web app, or IoT API for performance, uptime, and accuracy from over 20 global data center locations.
• Synthetic monitoring: Reduce false positives, validate the reliability of your web app, and get rich debugging insights using your existing Playwright code.
• Alerting: Get real-time and contextual alerts on any channel and discover when your service fails.

Pricing

Checkly offers a Hobby plan for starters, including basic monitoring tools and alerting features.

Team plan costs $40/month, comes with 50k API per 6k browser check runs, and supports up to 20 users. You’ll need to contact sales for a quote for the Custom plan.

Pros

• Reliable code monitoring solution
• Fast and easy set-up
• Deep & flexible uptime and performance monitoring for APIs and web apps

Cons

• Lack of good documentation for reusing code snippets for API checks
• Limited pricing plans
• Complex user interface

Conclusion

Pingdom is popular for its web performance and digital experience monitoring. However, some users seek alternatives to Pingdom for cost concerns, limited monitoring locations, and data privacy and security concerns. When choosing a Pingdom alternative, consider features, ease of use, integrations, reporting capabilities, and DDoS protection.

Instatus is a user-friendly status page tool offering unlimited subscribers and teammates in pricing plans. It's designed to be straightforward to learn. With Instatus, you can display incident templates and track your service status, uptime percentage, and metrics.

With its free plan, you can try out Instatus today!