Updated 25 October 2026 · By the Upcertain team
The short version
- Pick Healthchecks.io if you only need cron job monitoring, want a free tier for 20 jobs, or want SMS, WhatsApp and phone-call credits.
- Pick Upcertain if you want jobs and websites monitored together, with one set of alerts, incidents and a status page.
Side by side
| Upcertain | Healthchecks.io | |
|---|---|---|
| Focus | Uptime checks plus heartbeats | Cron job monitoring |
| Entry option | Basic: 10 monitors of any type | Hobbyist $0: 20 jobs |
| Paid plans | Early access, no billing | Supporter $5, Business $20 (100 jobs), Business Plus $80 (1,000 jobs) a month |
| Phone and SMS | No | Credits on Business and Business Plus |
| Website, API and port checks | Yes | Not on its pricing page |
| Open source | No | Business plan free for open-source projects |
Healthchecks.io's figures come from its pricing page, read on 25 October 2026.
Where Healthchecks.io does more
It keeps a log of each job's pings, offers SMS, WhatsApp and phone-call alerts on its Business plans, gives open-source projects its Business plan for free and charges little. If cron jobs are all you monitor, it is hard to beat on focus.
Where Upcertain is different
- Heartbeats and uptime in one place. Upcertain watches cron jobs with heartbeat monitors and also checks websites, APIs, ports and certificates, with the same alert channels and incidents for both.
- Status pages that show jobs and websites side by side, on your own domain on Team and Business.
- Periods from 30 seconds to 30 days with a grace period of up to a day.
- MCP and REST so agents and scripts can read missed heartbeats like any other incident.
Questions to ask before you switch
- Do you need anything besides cron monitoring? If not, a focused tool may be enough.
- Who needs a login, and who only needs alerts? Notify-only contacts cover the second group.
- How long do your deploys or jobs normally take? That decides confirmation checks and heartbeat grace.
Moving from Healthchecks.io
- List what you monitor in Healthchecks.io: URLs, hosts or jobs, with their intervals.
- Import URLs and hosts with a CSV file, up to 200 rows at a time (CSV import); add heartbeat monitors one by one.
- Add alert channels and send a test to each.
- Point your status page subdomain at
pages.upcertain.comif you had one (custom domains). - Run both side by side for a week before switching the old checks off.
Questions
Is there a free plan?
Upcertain is in early access: billing is not enabled, accounts start on the Basic plan and plans are assigned from the account.
Sources
- Healthchecks.io pricing (read 25 October 2026)