StatusCake vs Pingdom: pricing, check intervals and alerts compared

Short answer: StatusCake gives you far more monitors per dollar and bundles page speed, domain expiry and SSL checks into one subscription. Pingdom costs more per monitor but adds real user monitoring and scripted transaction checks that StatusCake does not match. Both floor out at 1-minute checks until you reach their upper plans. If what you actually want is faster confirmed detection rather than a wider product, that is the gap AlertPing fills at $19 a month flat.

Run a check first ▸

Last updated July 2026 · US dollar list prices checked July 2026

alertping ▸ run check

live

▸ type a domain and run a real-feel check

▸ probes from 3 regions · FRA · IAD · SIN

▸ waiting…▌

If ever goes down, you get:

Alert fired ▸ 2 channels · 6.2 s after first failure

AlertPing app

● DOWN : HTTP timeout confirmed from 3/3 regions (FRA, IAD, SIN). Incident opened.

sms · on-call

AlertPing: DOWN. Confirmed 3/3 regions . First fail: Frankfurt.

the short version

One is a budget bundle, the other is a performance suite

These two get compared constantly, which is a little odd, because they are not really competing for the same budget. They just happen to both put "website monitoring" on the tin.

StatusCake is the volume play. For $24.49 a month you get 100 uptime tests plus page speed monitoring, domain expiry reminders and SSL checks in the same account. For an agency holding 60 client sites, that is a lot of coverage for one line on the card statement.

Pingdom, now part of SolarWinds, sells performance visibility. Its Synthetic Monitoring plans start at $15 a month for 10 uptime checks, and the thing you are really paying for higher up is advanced checks (scripted, multi-step flows like a login or a checkout) and Real User Monitoring, sold as a separate product from around $10 a month. Neither of those exists at StatusCake.

So the honest framing is not "which is better" but "are you buying breadth of checks, or depth of performance data". And whichever you pick, notice what neither leads with: how long your site can be down before the tool tells you.

StatusCake

Free for 10 tests at 5-minute checks. Superior is $24.49 a month ($20.41 billed annually) for 100 tests at 1-minute checks. Best when you want a lot of monitors and page speed, domain and SSL checks bundled in.

Pingdom

No free plan, 14-day trial. Synthetic Monitoring starts at $15 a month for 10 uptime checks at 1-minute intervals. Best when scripted transaction checks and real user monitoring are the reason you are buying.

AlertPing

No free plan. $19 a month flat for 20 monitors at 60-second checks, $59 for 30-second checks with three-region confirmation. SMS included on every plan rather than metered as credits.

side by side

StatusCake vs Pingdom vs AlertPing

Figures are the US dollar list prices published by each vendor in July 2026. Both vendors show different currencies to visitors outside the US, and plans change, so confirm current numbers before you buy. Ours are on the pricing page.

	StatusCake	Pingdom	AlertPing
Free plan	Yes, 10 tests, 5-minute checks	No, 14-day trial only	No, free trial only
Entry paid plan	Superior, $24.49/mo ($20.41 annually), 100 tests	Synthetic Starter, $15/mo, 10 uptime checks	Starter, $19/mo, 20 monitors
Monitors for roughly $50 to $60	300 on Business at $66.66 annually	50 on Standard at $50	100 on Team at $59
Fastest check on the entry plan	1 minute	1 minute	60 seconds
Where 30-second checks start	Business, $79.99/mo ($66.66 annually)	Not offered, 1 minute is the floor	Team, $59/mo
SMS alerts	Credit packs, 75/mo on Superior, 400 on Business	Allowance by plan, 50 on Starter, 200 on Standard	Included on every plan, not metered
Multi-region confirmation before alerting	Multiple test locations available	Confirms from a second location before alerting	3 of 3 regions confirm every outage
Scripted transaction checks	No	Yes, sold as advanced checks	No
Real user monitoring	No	Yes, separate product from about $10/mo	No
Page speed monitoring	Yes, bundled	Yes	No
Domain expiry monitoring	Yes, bundled	No	No
SSL certificate expiry	Yes	Yes	Yes
Pricing model	Tiered, by monitors and check speed	Tiered, and Synthetic plus RUM are billed separately	Flat published tiers, no add-ons

the money

The price gap is wider than the feature gap

Headline prices hide the real difference, because the two tools count different things. StatusCake sells you a pool of tests. Pingdom sells you a smaller number of checks with more measurement inside each one. Line them up per monitor and the gap is stark.

If you need	StatusCake	Pingdom	AlertPing
10 monitors	Free tier covers it at 5 minutes	$15/mo Starter at 1 minute	$19/mo Starter at 60 seconds
50 monitors	$24.49/mo Superior at 1 minute	$50/mo Standard at 1 minute	$59/mo Team at 30 seconds
100 monitors	$24.49/mo Superior at 1 minute	$95/mo Advanced at 1 minute	$59/mo Team at 30 seconds
300 monitors	$79.99/mo Business at 30 seconds	$249/mo Professional at 1 minute	$189/mo Business at 30 seconds

Read that table and the pattern is obvious: on raw monitor count, StatusCake wins and it is not close. At 100 monitors it is roughly a quarter of Pingdom's price. What Pingdom is charging for is not the count, it is the advanced checks and the RUM data attached to them, so the comparison only makes sense if you will genuinely use those. Plenty of teams pay Pingdom prices and only ever run simple HTTP checks, which is the most expensive way to buy uptime monitoring there is.

alertping

See what a 30-second confirmed check looks like

Run a live check against your own site, then put the result next to the table above. 30-second checks, three-region confirmation and SMS on every plan, flat from $19 a month.

which to pick

Pick by what you are actually buying

Pick StatusCake if

You are watching a lot of sites and cost per monitor is the number that decides it.
Domain expiry reminders and SSL checks in the same tool would replace a spreadsheet you currently maintain.
1-minute checks are fast enough for what you run, and you would rather not pay for faster.

Pick Pingdom if

You need scripted multi-step checks that log in, add to cart or complete a form, not just a 200 response.
Real user monitoring matters to you, because you want the experience of actual visitors and not only probe results.
You are already inside the SolarWinds estate and consolidating vendors has its own value.

Pick AlertPing if

Detection speed is the point, and you want 30-second checks without paying an upper-tier price.
False alarms have burned your team and you want every outage confirmed from three regions first.
You want SMS to just work during an incident instead of running down a credit balance.

The unflattering part, said plainly: we do not have a free plan, we do not do real user monitoring, we do not run scripted transaction checks and we do not monitor page speed or domain expiry. If any of those is the reason you are shopping, one of these two is the better buy and you should know that before you start a trial with us. What we sell is faster confirmed detection at a small-team price. Our StatusCake alternative and Pingdom alternative pages go deeper on each one individually.

what the interval costs you

Both tools stop at 1 minute where it matters

Here is the number neither comparison chart puts up front. An outage can begin at any moment between two checks, so on average you find out about half an interval after it starts, and worst case a full one. That delay lands at the very front of the incident, before anyone has even begun to fix anything.

Check interval	Typical delay before you know	Worst case	Where you get it
5 minutes	About 2.5 minutes	5 minutes	StatusCake free tier
1 minute	About 30 seconds	1 minute	StatusCake Superior, every Pingdom Synthetic plan
30 seconds	About 15 seconds	30 seconds	StatusCake Business, AlertPing Team

Pingdom is the interesting case here. You can spend $249 a month on its Professional plan and still be on a 1-minute check, because what the higher tiers buy is more checks and more measurement, not a faster interval. If the thing you are optimizing is time to detection, that is money spent on the wrong axis. There is more on choosing intervals per monitor in our guide to how often you should check uptime.

questions

StatusCake and Pingdom questions, answered

What is the difference between StatusCake and Pingdom?

StatusCake bundles a large number of uptime tests with page speed, domain expiry and SSL monitoring at a low price. Pingdom sells fewer checks at a higher price but adds scripted transaction checks and real user monitoring. StatusCake optimizes for coverage across many sites, Pingdom for depth of performance data on a few.

Is StatusCake better than Pingdom?

For simple uptime at scale, yes, and by a wide margin on price: 100 monitors costs $24.49 a month on StatusCake against $95 on Pingdom. For scripted multi-step checks or real user monitoring, Pingdom is better because StatusCake does not offer either. Pick by which of those two jobs you are hiring the tool to do.

Is Pingdom free?

No. Pingdom has no free plan, only a 14-day trial that covers Synthetic Monitoring and RUM. Paid Synthetic Monitoring starts at $15 a month for 10 uptime checks. StatusCake does have a free tier, covering 10 tests at 5-minute intervals plus one page speed, domain and SSL monitor.

How much does Pingdom cost?

Pingdom Synthetic Monitoring lists at $15 a month for Starter (10 uptime checks), $50 for Standard (50 checks), $95 for Advanced (100 checks) and $249 for Professional (250 or more). Real User Monitoring is a separate product starting around $10 a month. Annual billing carries a discount. Verify current figures on their pricing page.

Is Pingdom part of SolarWinds?

Yes. SolarWinds acquired Pingdom in 2014 and the product is sold as SolarWinds Pingdom. That matters mainly for procurement and support: you are buying from a large enterprise software vendor rather than an independent tool, which some buyers want and others specifically do not.

Does StatusCake or Pingdom do 30-second checks?

StatusCake does, on its Business tier at $79.99 a month ($66.66 billed annually). Pingdom does not: 1 minute is the floor on every Synthetic Monitoring plan, including the $249 Professional tier. If sub-minute detection is a requirement, that rules Pingdom out regardless of budget.

Can I move my monitors from one to the other?

Yes, and it is easier than it sounds. A basic uptime monitor is a URL, an interval, an expected response and a notification rule, so migrating is mostly re-entering a list. Scripted transaction checks are the exception and have to be rebuilt. Run both tools in parallel for a week, compare what each one caught, then cancel.

Which one is better for an agency?

StatusCake, in most cases. Agencies watch many client sites where the requirement is "tell me it is down", and the domain expiry reminders alone save real work across a client book. Pingdom becomes worth it when a client pays for performance reporting. We wrote more about this in uptime monitoring for agencies.

keep reading

Faster detection, without the upper-tier bill

30-second checks confirmed from three regions, SMS on every plan and pricing that does not move. Flat from $19 a month.

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