Cronitor alternative with flat pricing, SMS in every plan and website checks included
Short answer: switch to AlertPing if you want cron heartbeat monitoring plus website, API, SSL and port checks under one flat price, instead of paying $2 per monitor and $5 per user every month as your job count climbs. Stay on Cronitor if deep cron instrumentation is the whole point, because their per-job telemetry, run duration tracking and free tier for 5 monitors are genuinely good. AlertPing treats a heartbeat as an ordinary monitor inside your plan, so 30 jobs cost the same $59 as 30 websites.
Cronitor prices read from cronitor.io/pricing in US dollars
alertping ▸ check preview
simulated
▸ type a domain to watch a check and an alert play out
▸ simulation of 2 regions · US East · EU Central
▸ waiting…▌
queued
probing▌
If ever goes down, you get:
Alert fired ▸ 2 channels · 6.2 s after first failure
AlertPing app
● DOWN : HTTP timeout confirmed from 2/2 regions (US East, EU Central). Incident opened.
sms · on-call
AlertPing: DOWN. Confirmed 2/2 regions . First fail: EU Central.
Simulation, not a measurement of your site: this preview runs entirely in your browser and the latencies are generated from the domain you typed. Real checks on your monitors run from our US East and EU Central regions.
side by side
AlertPing vs Cronitor, row by row
Cronitor figures below were read off their public pricing page. Vendors change prices, so check their current numbers before you sign anything. The full rate card, with worked bills, is in our Cronitor pricing breakdown. Ours are on the uptime monitoring pricing page and they do not move with usage.
| AlertPing | Cronitor | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Flat per plan. 20 / 100 / 500 monitors for $49 / $59 / $189 a month, everything included | Metered Business plan: $2 per monitor plus $5 per user a month, no base fee. A separate free Hacker plan covers 5 monitors at 5 minutes |
| Cost of 30 monitors, one user | $59/mo Team ($29 yearly), with 70 monitors still to spare | $65/mo: 30 monitors at $2 plus $5 for the user. Business bills every monitor, the free 5 are the Hacker plan |
| Cost of a 5-person team | Flat. Team includes up to 15 members at no extra charge | Adds $25/mo for 5 users at $5 each on top of monitor costs, plus $5 per user more for SAML SSO |
| Cron / heartbeat monitoring | Counted as ordinary monitors in your plan allowance, with cron heartbeat checks and dead-man switches | Their core. Deep per-job telemetry: run duration, exit codes, output capture and metrics |
| Website, API, SSL, port checks | All included in the same plan and monitor count, no separate product | Uptime and page checks exist, but the platform is built cron-first |
| SMS alerts | Included in every plan, 100 to 3,000 SMS a month by plan | Available; phone and SMS alerting sits on paid usage, not the free tier |
| Multi-region confirmation | 2 of 2 regions (US East, EU Central) must agree before any alert fires | Up to 12 check regions; a second region has to agree before an outage is declared |
| Free tier | No free tier. Paid from $49/mo; run a live check before you buy | They win here. Free for 5 monitors and 1 user, which is great for a solo developer |
| Enterprise entry | Enterprise at $378/mo ($189 billed yearly) with 15-second checks and 1,500 monitors | Enterprise from about $6,000/year |
to be fair
When Cronitor is the better fit
- Cron is the entire job. You want per-run duration, exit codes, captured output and metrics on each scheduled task, and you will instrument jobs with their client libraries.
- You are a solo developer with five jobs and no budget. Their free tier for 5 monitors is a genuinely good deal and we do not have a free plan.
- Your monitor count is small and stable, so pay-per-monitor never adds up to more than a flat plan would cost.
If that is you, use Cronitor. They are cron specialists and the depth shows. We would rather you read this and stay than switch and miss a feature you relied on.
where alertping pulls ahead
Where AlertPing wins for most teams
The bill stops growing
Per-monitor pricing punishes you for monitoring more. Adding the 40th job or the 8th teammate to a flat plan costs nothing until you cross a plan ceiling, so you never hesitate to add a check.
One tool for jobs and sites
Cron heartbeats live next to website, API, SSL and port checks in one dashboard, one alert policy and one invoice, instead of a cron tool plus a separate uptime tool.
SMS included in every plan
SMS is in every plan, from 100 a month on Starter to 3,000 on Enterprise, so a failed backup pings your phone the same way a down homepage does.
Second-region confirmation on web checks
For the website and API side of the account, US East and EU Central both have to agree before you get paged, so a single flaky route never wakes you at 3am.
moving over
Switching a cron heartbeat takes one URL change
-
1
Create the heartbeat
Add a heartbeat monitor and set the expected interval, say every 24 hours with a grace window. AlertPing gives you a unique ping URL.
-
2
Swap the ping URL
Wherever your job curls Cronitor at the end of a successful run, point that curl at the new URL. No client library required for a basic heartbeat.
-
3
Add your web checks
While you are here, add the website, API and SSL checks that were living in a second tool, and route everything through one escalation policy.
New to heartbeats? The full walkthrough is in how to monitor a cron job, with working shell examples.
asked before switching
Cronitor alternative questions, answered
Is there a free Cronitor alternative?
Cronitor itself has the most generous free tier for pure cron monitoring, with 5 monitors free. AlertPing does not offer a free plan; it starts at $49 a month for 20 monitors with SMS and multi-region checks included. If you need more than a handful of jobs, or you also monitor websites and APIs, a flat paid plan usually costs less than metered pricing at scale.
Does AlertPing do cron job monitoring like Cronitor?
Yes, for the heartbeat side. Your job pings a unique URL when it succeeds, and if that ping does not arrive inside the expected window you get alerted. That is the dead-man switch that catches a silently failed backup. Cronitor goes deeper on per-run telemetry like duration and exit codes, so if you need that instrumentation they are the specialist.
Why move off per-monitor pricing?
Metered pricing quietly discourages monitoring. When each new check adds to the bill, teams stop adding checks and gaps appear. A flat plan removes that friction: you add the 40th monitor and the 8th teammate without a second thought, because the invoice does not move until you cross a plan ceiling.
Can I run cron and website monitoring in one tool?
Yes, that is the main reason teams switch. AlertPing puts cron heartbeats, website checks, API checks, SSL expiry and port monitoring in one dashboard with one alert policy and one bill. Instead of a cron tool plus a separate uptime service, everything a small team needs to watch lives in the same account.
how we page you
Two regions have to agree
A single failed probe never wakes anybody. A second region, US East or EU Central, re-checks first, so a hiccup on one route is not a 3am phone call.
what a plan covers
SMS is in the price, not in credits
Email, Slack and webhook alerts are unlimited on every plan, SMS comes with a monthly allowance, and each plan hosts status pages. No credit packs, no per-message fee, no per-monitor math.
how setup works
One URL, no agent to install
Paste the address, choose where alerts go, and the first check runs from both regions. No agent, no config file, nothing to deploy on your side.
Cron heartbeats and website checks, one flat plan
30 jobs or 30 websites, same price. SMS in every plan, second-region confirmation, and no per-monitor metering. Running in under a minute.