Pingdom starts at $15/mo for 10 monitors and charges more as you scale. Uptime Kuma is free, open-source, and gives you unlimited monitors. Self-host it on InstaPods for $3/mo.
| Feature | Pingdom | Uptime Kuma |
|---|---|---|
| Starting Price | $15/mo (10 monitors) | $3/mo total (self-hosted on InstaPods) |
| Monitors Included | 10 (Starter) - 250 (Enterprise) | Unlimited - add as many as you need |
| Check Interval | 1 minute (all plans) | Down to 20 seconds |
| Monitor Types | HTTP, TCP, DNS, Ping | HTTP, TCP, DNS, Ping, Docker, Steam, MQTT, and more |
| Status Pages | 1 public page (Starter) | Unlimited status pages |
| Notification Channels | Email, SMS, integrations | 90+ channels (Slack, Discord, Telegram, webhook, etc.) |
| Multi-Location Checks | Yes (global probes) | Single location (your server) |
| Response Time Charts | Yes | Yes - with historical data |
| SSL Certificate Monitoring | Included | Included |
| Source Code | Closed source | Open source (MIT license) |
Limitations that push you toward self-hosting.
Pingdom's $15/mo plan only includes 10 monitors. If you have 30 endpoints to watch, you're looking at $40+/mo. Enterprise plans with 250 monitors cost $225/mo.
The Starter plan gives you one public status page with basic branding. Advanced customization and multiple status pages require higher-tier plans.
Pingdom was acquired by SolarWinds and has seen limited innovation since. The interface feels dated compared to modern alternatives.
Your monitoring data lives on Pingdom's infrastructure. If their service goes down, you lose visibility into your own uptime - which has happened.
What you get when you own your infrastructure.
Add HTTP, TCP, DNS, ping, and Docker monitors without limits. Monitor your entire infrastructure from one dashboard.
Uptime Kuma has a clean, responsive dashboard that feels modern. Real-time status, response time charts, and uptime percentages at a glance.
Get alerts via Slack, Discord, Telegram, email, webhook, PagerDuty, Gotify, and 80+ more. No extra cost per channel.
Create beautiful, customizable status pages for your users. Custom domain support, incident history, and maintenance windows - all free.
Monitoring 25 endpoints with 1-minute checks and a public status page.
For monitoring your services, yes. Uptime Kuma checks your endpoints at configurable intervals and sends alerts when something goes down. The one advantage Pingdom has is multi-location monitoring (checking from different geographic regions). For most teams, single-location monitoring from a European or US server is sufficient.
Yes. Uptime Kuma includes a status page feature where you can group monitors, show uptime history, and share a public URL with your users. You can create multiple status pages with custom branding.
HTTP(s), TCP, DNS, Ping, Docker containers, Steam game servers, MQTT, gRPC, and more. It also monitors SSL certificate expiry and can check for specific keywords in response bodies.
Click the deploy button, and InstaPods creates a fully configured Uptime Kuma instance with HTTPS in about 30 seconds. Log in, add your first monitor, and you're watching your endpoints within a minute.
Deploy Uptime Kuma on InstaPods and stop paying for features that should be free.
Deploy Uptime Kuma