Updated 25 October 2026 · By the Upcertain team
The short version
- Pick HetrixTools if you need blacklist monitoring for mail servers, checks from many locations, SMS or phone alerts, or a free tier of 15 monitors.
- Pick Upcertain if you want 30-second checks, heartbeats for jobs, chat alerts, status pages with grouped incidents and MCP.
Side by side
| Upcertain | HetrixTools | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry option | Basic: 10 monitors, 60 s (early access, no billing) | 15 uptime monitors, 1-minute checks |
| Paid plans | Team, Business | From $9.95 a month |
| Locations | One (Seoul) | 12 locations |
| Alerts | Email and chat tools, webhooks | 20+ channels including SMS and phone calls |
| Blacklist monitoring | No | Yes |
| Heartbeat monitoring | Yes | Not on its uptime pricing page |
HetrixTools' figures come from its uptime monitor pricing page, read on 25 October 2026.
What the table leaves out
HetrixTools' free tier and location count are generous for a few servers. Upcertain's advantage is in what happens after a failure: confirmation before alerting, incidents your team acknowledges, and a status page that explains the outage to customers.
Where HetrixTools does more
Blacklist monitoring is useful for anyone running mail servers, and checks from 12 locations with SMS and phone alerts cover more than Upcertain does.
Where Upcertain is different
- 30-second checks on Team and Business.
- Heartbeat monitors for cron jobs and workers.
- Status pages that group incidents and fold brief outages.
- MCP and REST for agents and scripts.
Questions to ask before you switch
- Do you rely on blacklist monitoring? Keep it where it is if so.
- 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 HetrixTools
- List what you monitor in HetrixTools: 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
Can Upcertain monitor a mail server?
It can check that the server accepts connections on its port, such as 587 or 25, with a port monitor. It does not check blacklists or deliverability.
Do checks run every minute?
Every 60 seconds on Basic and as often as every 30 seconds on Team and Business.
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
- HetrixTools uptime monitor pricing (read 25 October 2026)