compare · alertping vs whatsup gold
WhatsUp Gold alternative and WhatsUp Gold competitors priced per device
Short answer: WhatsUp Gold Business costs $1,229 a year for 50 devices and runs on a Windows server you maintain. If you need SNMP polling, topology maps and traffic analysis, PRTG and Checkmk are the closest paid alternatives. If the job is knowing when your websites, VPN, mail server and remote offices stop answering, AlertPing Team checks 100 of them every 30 seconds from three regions for $348 a year, with nothing to install.
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.
$1,229 / yr
WhatsUp Gold Business, the entry subscription, sold from 50 devices
10 devices
the WhatsUp Gold Free Edition limit. Device 11 costs the full 50-device price.
1 install
on Business. A second server for failover needs Enterprise at $2,049.
$348 / yr
AlertPing Team, 100 monitors every 30 seconds from US East and EU Central
why teams look
Why admins shop for a WhatsUp Gold replacement
WhatsUp Gold is a solid network monitor, and Progress still develops and sells it. Most people who search for an alternative are not unhappy with the polling. They are unhappy with the shape of the bill and the server that comes with it.
The paid editions are published only at 50 devices. A 20-device office pays the same $1,229 as a 50-device one, which works out to $61.45 per device it actually monitors. Above 50 devices every price is a quote. And every edition is self-hosted on Windows Server, so the monitor shares fate with the network it watches: when the internet uplink or the monitoring box goes down, the alert has no way out.
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Price floor
Paid editions start at 50 devices. Eleven devices cost the same as fifty.
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Quotes
No published price for 51, 100 or 500 devices, so every growth step is a sales call.
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Server
Windows Server 2019, 2022 or 2025, quad-core 2.6 GHz, 8 GB RAM and 25 GB disk, all yours to patch.
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Failover
Business allows a single installation. A second server for high availability needs Enterprise.
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Viewpoint
It polls from inside your network. It cannot tell you what a customer outside sees.
whatsup gold competitors
WhatsUp Gold alternatives with published prices
Each row uses the vendor's own list price in US dollars. The last column prices roughly the same 50-device network for one year, with the assumption shown, so you can compare before anyone sends a quote.
| Tool | How it is priced | Published entry price | Year one for about 50 devices | Hosting | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Progress WhatsUp Gold | Per device, every monitor on it included | Business $1,229 a year for 50 devices; Free up to 10 | $1,229 | Windows Server you run | Port-dense switches and Windows shops that want maps and SNMP |
| Paessler PRTG | Per sensor, billed annually | $2,400 a year for 500 sensors; Freeware 100 sensors | $2,400 at 10 sensors per device | Windows, or Paessler-hosted for about the same price | Admins who want one tool for SNMP, flows and sensors |
| Checkmk | Per monitored service, yearly | Pro $3,300 a year for 3,000 services; Cloud $2,880 for 1,000 | $3,300 at the smallest Pro tier | Linux server, or Checkmk Cloud | Linux-first teams with many services per host |
| Nagios XI | Perpetual license per node, plus yearly renewal | $2,595 for 100 nodes, renewal $2,104 a year | $2,595 | Linux server you run | Teams that already know Nagios plugins |
| SolarWinds Observability SaaS | Per node a month, per module | $15.75 per node a month for network and infrastructure | $9,450 | SaaS, or self-hosted from $8 per node | Larger estates standardizing on one vendor |
| LogicMonitor | Per Hybrid Unit a month | Essentials $16 per unit a month, list | $9,600 before discounts | SaaS with an on-site collector | Hybrid cloud estates and MSPs |
| AlertPing | Flat plan, no device or sensor meter | Starter $288 a year, Team $348 a year | $348 for up to 100 endpoints | SaaS, checks from two regions | Outside-in checks on websites, APIs, VPN and mail ports, SSL and cron jobs |
Sources: whatsupgold.com/pricing, paessler.com/pricing, checkmk.com/pricing, nagios.com, solarwinds.com/pricing, logicmonitor.com/pricing. Zabbix is free and open source, with Zabbix Cloud from $50 a month. The full edition math is in our WhatsUp Gold pricing breakdown, and the head-to-head with Paessler is in PRTG vs WhatsUp Gold.
five years out
What a WhatsUp Gold subscription costs over five years
Subscriptions are yearly, so the useful number is the total you sign up for by keeping it. At the 50-device list price, Business adds up to $6,145 over five years, Enterprise $10,245 and Enterprise Plus $17,345. None of that includes the Windows license, the machine or the hours spent patching it.
The perpetual route does not escape it. Premium is $5,089 up front for 50 devices with one year of updates, and the yearly maintenance renewal after that is not published. Ask for it in writing before comparing.
AlertPing Team over the same five years is $1,740, and Business, with 500 monitors and SLA reports, is $5,640. Both prices are on the pricing page.
five-year list cost, USD
WhatsUp Gold at the 50-device starting price, five yearly terms. Server costs excluded.
read this before you switch
Where WhatsUp Gold is still the better tool
- Layer 2 and 3 discovery with interactive topology maps of switches, routers, access points and the links between them.
- SNMP and WMI polling of interfaces, disks, CPU and services on devices inside your network, with unlimited monitors per device license.
- Flow-based traffic analysis and configuration backup on Enterprise Plus.
- A perpetual license, which very few vendors in this market still sell.
AlertPing does none of those. It does not read SNMP, draw maps or inspect traffic. If your alerts mostly come from switch ports and server counters, stay with a network monitor and use the table above to negotiate. If they mostly come from "the website is down" or "the branch office VPN stopped answering", that job moves outside the network, and it gets cheaper.
the cheaper split
Keep WhatsUp Gold Free inside, check the outside with AlertPing
Small offices often pay for Business only because they crossed ten devices, and most of what they alert on is reachability. Splitting the job keeps the maps and drops the bill.
Inside the network
WhatsUp Gold Free Edition
Core switch, firewall, file server and the handful of devices you want SNMP graphs and a topology map for. Free up to 10 devices.
$0
Outside the network
AlertPing Team
Website, customer portal, API, VPN gateway, mail ports, each branch office public IP, SSL certificates and backup cron jobs. 100 monitors every 30 seconds.
$348 a year
Instead of
WhatsUp Gold Business
One 50-device license for an office that uses 15 of them, on a Windows server that also has to stay up for alerts to leave.
$1,229 a year
The split also fixes the blind spot. When the office uplink fails, an inside monitor cannot send the alert. AlertPing sees the branch IP stop answering from US East and EU Central and pages you by SMS anyway. Port and ping checks are covered in server monitoring, and the alert rules in website down alerts.
the outside-in job
What AlertPing covers when you move reachability checks out
Ping and TCP port checks
ICMP ping and port checks on public IPs, VPN gateways, SMTP, IMAP, RDP gateways and database endpoints.
Second-region confirmation
A failure from one region is re-checked from the second region before anyone is paged, so a single bad route does not wake you.
SSL certificate expiry
Warnings before certificates on your portals, VPN and mail servers expire, on every plan.
HTTP and API checks
Status code, keyword and response time on every URL, with headers and a body for APIs.
Alerts that leave anyway
SMS, email, Slack and webhooks on every plan, escalation chains and on-call hours from Team. Nothing depends on your uplink.
Nothing to patch
No Windows server, no SQL Express, no agent. Add a monitor in the browser and it runs within a minute.
migration
How to move off WhatsUp Gold before the renewal date
Subscriptions renew yearly, so plan the change about 60 to 90 days before the term ends. That gives you two weeks of running both, and time to downgrade to Free or renew a smaller tier instead of the same 50 devices.
If you are replacing the whole stack rather than splitting it, the PRTG alternative and Checkmk alternative pages price those tools in the same way, and the OpManager alternative page does it for ManageEngine's per-device rival.
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1
Export the device list
From the WhatsUp Gold device inventory, mark each device as internal (switch, server, AP) or reachable from outside (site, VPN, mail, branch IP).
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2
Rebuild the outside checks
One AlertPing monitor per URL, public IP or port, with the same expected status code, keyword or port.
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3
Copy alert routing
Recreate recipients as escalation chains with delays and on-call hours, and add a status page if customers ask about outages.
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4
Run both for two weeks
Compare alerts side by side. Differences usually come from retry settings, not the check itself.
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5
Right-size the renewal
Keep ten or fewer internal devices on Free, or renew a quote for only the devices that still need SNMP.
questions buyers ask
WhatsUp Gold alternative questions
What is the best alternative to WhatsUp Gold?
It depends on what you monitor. For SNMP polling, maps and traffic analysis, the closest paid alternatives are Paessler PRTG at $2,400 a year for 500 sensors and Checkmk Pro at $3,300 a year. For checking websites, VPN gateways, mail ports and branch offices from outside, AlertPing Team covers 100 endpoints every 30 seconds for $348 a year.
How much does WhatsUp Gold cost?
WhatsUp Gold subscriptions start at $1,229 a year for 50 devices on Business, $2,049 on Enterprise and $3,469 on Enterprise Plus. Perpetual licenses start at $5,089 for 50 devices on Premium. Prices above 50 devices are quoted, and a Free Edition covers up to 10 devices.
Is WhatsUp Gold free?
Yes, for up to 10 devices. The Free Edition is permanent and includes discovery, topology mapping, alerting and reporting. The next step is the 50-device Business subscription at $1,229 a year, so an 11-device network pays the same as a 50-device one.
Is WhatsUp Gold better than PRTG?
Neither wins on every network. WhatsUp Gold licenses per device with unlimited monitors on each, which favors port-dense switches. PRTG licenses per sensor, which favors networks with few checks per device. At 50 devices, WhatsUp Gold Business lists $1,229 a year and the smallest PRTG license $2,400.
Does WhatsUp Gold need a Windows server?
Yes. WhatsUp Gold installs on Windows Server 2019, 2022 or 2025, and Progress lists a minimum of a quad-core 2.6 GHz processor, 8 GB of memory and 25 GB of disk, with SQL Server Express bundled. The server, its license and its patching are your cost.
Who owns WhatsUp Gold?
Progress Software owns WhatsUp Gold. It came to Progress with the purchase of Ipswitch in 2019, and Progress still sells it in subscription and perpetual editions, with Network Detection and Response sold alongside it as a separate product.
Can AlertPing replace WhatsUp Gold completely?
No. AlertPing does not read SNMP, discover devices or draw network maps. It checks websites, APIs, public IPs, TCP ports, SSL certificates and cron heartbeats from two regions and alerts by SMS, email, Slack and webhook. Many teams use it for everything reachable from outside and keep a small network monitor inside.
Is there a cheaper alternative to WhatsUp Gold for a small office?
Yes. If you have more than 10 devices but mostly alert on reachability, keep WhatsUp Gold Free for the 10 devices you want graphs for and move outside checks to AlertPing Team at $348 a year. That replaces a $1,229 Business subscription and removes the single-server blind spot.
related comparisons
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.
Reachability checks without a Windows server
Websites, APIs, public IPs, ports, SSL certificates and cron heartbeats, confirmed from a second region. Team watches 100 monitors every 30 seconds for $59 a month, or $348 a year.