More locations, more check types, the same simple pricing.
StatusCake is a solid uptime checker - but its 43 monitoring locations, status pages sold as a separate product, and SMS credit caps leave gaps once your monitoring needs grow. HostTracker has watched the web since 2004: 14 monitor types, 300+ checkpoints, alerting on every plan, and a status page included free.
Four honest reasons
43 locations against 300+ checkpoints
StatusCake publishes 43 monitoring locations across 30 countries. HostTracker checks from 300+ checkpoints across every continent, and re-verifies a suspected outage from several of them before an incident opens - a broader confirmation net than a single-location check.
Status pages are a separate purchase
StatusCake sells status pages as their own product, from around EUR 12/month, on top of a monitoring plan. HostTracker includes a status page - components, incident history and subscriber notifications - on every plan, including free.
No transaction, database or SNMP checks
StatusCake's plans cover uptime, page speed, domain, SSL and blacklist monitoring, but not transaction, database or SNMP checks. HostTracker adds full browser transaction checks, database queries and SNMP counters for the failures a plain uptime check cannot see.
SMS is credit-capped even on paid plans
StatusCake caps SMS at 75/month on Superior and 400/month on Business. HostTracker's paid plans include a monthly SMS allowance that tops up automatically, plus voice calls for outages that must not wait for someone to check Slack.
HostTracker vs StatusCake, feature by feature
Both products are good at what they focus on - the marks below go both ways. As of August 2026:
| HostTracker | StatusCake | |
|---|---|---|
| Monitoring | ||
| HTTP / HTTPS and keyword checks | Yes | Yes |
| Ping, port, DNS and other protocol checks | Yes | Yes |
| SSL certificate expiry and change alerts | Yes | 24-hour check, free plan included |
| Domain expiration (registry RDAP data) | Yes | 7-day check, free plan included |
| Browser transaction checks (log in, pay) | Yes | No |
| Page-speed measurement in real browsers | Yes | 24-hour check, free plan included |
| Database query monitoring | Yes | No |
| SNMP counters and server resources | Yes | No |
| DNS blacklist (DNSBL) checks | Yes | Part of Domain Monitoring, 8 blacklists |
| Google Web Risk verdicts | Yes | No |
| Real-user monitoring (RUM) | Synthetic page speed instead | No |
| Monitoring locations | 300+ checkpoints | 43 locations across 30 countries |
| Fastest paid interval | 1 minute | 30 seconds on Business plan (EUR69.99/month) |
| Alerting | ||
| Email alerts | Yes | Yes |
| SMS alerts | Monthly allowance on paid plans | Credit-capped - 75/mo Superior, 400/mo Business |
| Voice-call alerts | Included via credits | Rate-limited to 1 call per 5 minutes |
| Slack, Microsoft Teams, Mattermost | Yes | Via integrations |
| PagerDuty incidents | Auto-resolve on recovery | Via integrations |
| Telegram, Discord, Viber | Yes | No |
| Pushover and Pushbullet | Yes | No |
| Signed webhooks | 15 typed events, HMAC signatures | Webhooks available |
| Status pages | ||
| Status page on every plan | Including free | Sold separately (from ~EUR 12/mo) |
| Subscriber notifications | Email, Slack, Teams, webhooks | Not published |
| JSON / RSS exports and embeddable badges | Yes | No |
| White-label + custom domain | Enterprise plans | Not published |
| Developers | ||
| REST API | v2 - 182 operations, OpenAPI 3.1 | Paid plans |
| Official SDKs | TypeScript, Python, Go, .NET | Go official, others alpha |
| Command-line client | ht-cli | Coming soon |
| GitHub Action | Yes | Not published |
| MCP server for AI assistants | Hosted or run locally (stdio) | Not published |
| Terraform provider | No | StatusCakeDev, official |
| Product | ||
| Native mobile apps | Responsive web app | iOS and Android |
| Commercial use of the free plan | Yes | No stated commercial-use restriction |
| Trial | 30 days, 100 monitors, no card | 7-day trial of any paid plan, no card |
| Monitoring since | 2004 | Established uptime monitoring provider |
| Pricing model | $9.90/month flat anchor | EUR19.99-69.99/month by monitor count and interval |
Competitor facts from statuscake.com's pricing, help center and locations pages, August 2026. Found something out of date? Tell us and we will fix it.
What a paid plan actually costs
- All 14 check types on paid plans - transactions, database, SNMP, DNSBL included
- Monthly SMS allowance included; voice calls via the same credits
- Status page on every plan, free included
- Free plan allows commercial use; 30-day / 100-monitor trial, no card
- Superior EUR19.99/mo - 100 monitors at 1-minute intervals, 75 SMS included
- Business EUR69.99/mo - 300 monitors at 30-second intervals, 400 SMS included - faster than HostTracker's fastest interval
- Free plan: 10 monitors at a 5-minute interval; SMS and phone-call alerts need a paid plan
- SMS stays credit-capped even on paid plans - 75/month on Superior, 400/month on Business
Full plan details: HostTracker pricing. StatusCake prices from their public pricing page, August 2026.
Alerts where your team already lives
Down and Up events, repeated-failure escalations, SSL and domain warnings and blacklist verdicts - delivered to:
Plus a REST API, four official SDKs, ht-cli and an MCP server for AI assistants - see the developer platform.
Migrate in an afternoon, decide in a month
- Export from StatusCake. Pull your test list through the dashboard or its API - urls, names, intervals.
- Create them all in one command. Reshape into monitor JSON and run:
ht-cli monitors bulk-create --json @monitors.json - Run both for a month. The 30-day trial fits 100 monitors with every feature enabled - compare incident logs, response-time charts and alert latency on your own traffic before anything is cancelled. Keep the free plan afterwards either way.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, especially if you need check types beyond uptime, page speed, domain and SSL, or more monitoring locations than StatusCake's 43, across 30 countries. HostTracker adds transaction, database and SNMP checks across 300+ checkpoints, with a free plan and a 30-day, 100-monitor trial to compare against your current setup.
Export your test list through the StatusCake dashboard or API, reshape it into HostTracker's monitor JSON, and create them all in one call with the bulk API - or one command with ht-cli: ht-cli monitors bulk-create --json @monitors.json. The 30-day trial fits 100 monitors, so most accounts run both services in parallel for a month and compare incident logs before switching over.
Yes. To be fair to StatusCake, its free plan is generous on monitor count - 10 uptime monitors at a 5-minute interval, plus one page speed, one domain and one SSL check. HostTracker's free plan has no commercial-use restriction and pairs with a separate 30-day, 100-monitor trial with no credit card, so you can evaluate at real scale before deciding.
Beyond HTTP, ping, port and keyword checks, HostTracker monitors full browser transactions (log in, add to cart, pay), database queries, SNMP counters, server resources, and DNS blacklists (DNSBL) - 14 monitor types in total. StatusCake's plans cover uptime, page speed, domain and SSL monitoring, plus blacklist monitoring, but not transaction, database or SNMP checks.
Paid HostTracker plans include a free monthly SMS credit allowance that tops up automatically, and voice-call alerts ride the same credit balance. StatusCake's SMS is credit-capped even on paid plans - 75 messages a month on Superior, 400 on Business - and its native phone-call alerts are rate-limited to one call every five minutes.
Email, SMS, voice calls, Slack, Microsoft Teams, PagerDuty with automatic incident resolve, Mattermost, Pushover, Pushbullet, Telegram, Discord, Viber, browser push, and signed webhooks with 15 typed events for anything custom - alerting is included on every plan, not gated behind integrations alone.
300+ checkpoints across every continent, against StatusCake's 43 published locations across 30 countries. A failed check is re-verified from several other locations before an incident opens, so a single flaky vantage point does not page anyone - and the incident record shows exactly which locations confirmed the outage.
Yes, on every plan including the free one. Status pages carry components, incident history, subscriber notifications over email, Slack, Teams and webhooks, machine-readable JSON and RSS exports, and embeddable badges; Enterprise plans add white-label branding and custom domains.
The REST API v2 exposes 182 operations, documented with OpenAPI 3.1, with official SDKs for TypeScript, Python, Go and .NET, the ht-cli command-line client, a GitHub Action, and an MCP server that lets AI assistants like Claude or Cursor run checks and manage monitors. API access is included in Business, Enterprise and the 30-day trial.
Keep exploring HostTracker's monitoring
More locations, more check types, the same simple pricing
Start the 30-day trial - 100 monitors, every check type, no credit card - and keep a commercial-use free plan afterwards.