CheckFast vs updown.io
an honest comparison
Side-by-side
| Feature | CheckFast | updown.io |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing entry tier (as of 2026) | $9/mo Starter | Pay-as-you-go credits |
| Free tier limits | 3 free monitors + one-off tools | Trial credits only |
| Tools / dimensions covered | Uptime, SSL, email, speed, DNS, cron, broken links + 14 more | Uptime + SSL expiry |
| HTTP/HTTPS uptime | ||
| SSL expiry alerts | ||
| Security header scoring | ||
| Page speed monitoring | ||
| Email deliverability scoring | ||
| Cron heartbeat | ||
| DNS monitoring | ||
| Broken-link sweeps | ||
| Uptime monitor cadence | 1m–5m by plan | 30s–4h |
| Multi-region testing | ||
| Telegram alerts | ||
| Slack / webhook / email alerts | ||
| Public status page | Pro+ at /status/[handle] | |
| Public API | Pro $29/mo | all tiers |
| White-label / agency | limited |
Why teams switch
44-tool catalog instead of one surface
updown.io is uptime + SSL only. CheckFast adds email deliverability, cron heartbeats, DNS history, page speed and the wider site-health catalog.
Familiar alert channels
CheckFast supports Telegram and email on Starter, with Slack and webhook delivery on Pro and Agency.
Flat, predictable pricing
$9 / $29 / $79 — that is the whole price list. updown.io's credits are transparent but harder to forecast at scale.
updown.io is the indie dev favourite
updown.io has been the “just monitors my site, doesn't bug me, doesn't upsell” choice for nearly a decade. Credit-based pricing — pay roughly $0.50 per check per month at one-minute cadence — is genuinely transparent and refreshingly free of tier-juggling. The dashboard is one chart and one toggle. The Apdex-style metric is opinionated in a good way. For a developer running a few personal projects who hates surprises on their billing page, it is hard to fault.
CheckFast comes at the problem differently. We bundle a 44-tool catalog (uptime, SSL, email deliverability, page speed, cron heartbeats, DNS, broken links, security headers, SEO and more) under one flat subscription: $9 Starter, $29 Pro, $79 Agency. The pitch is consolidation — one bill, one dashboard, one alert routing config — for teams who would otherwise be juggling four or five vendors.
When updown.io still wins
At very low monitor counts with one-minute cadence, updown.io credits can come out cheaper than our $9 Starter. The multi-region setup has been reliable for years and is further along than our single-region edge today. The minimalism is a feature: if you genuinely want one chart and one toggle, we are not that. The Apdex metric is a smart lens we do not currently report — CheckFast stores per-run response time and status history instead.
When CheckFast wins
The moment you need anything beyond uptime and SSL expiry. Email deliverability scoring across SPF / DKIM / DMARC / BIMI / MTA-STS / TLS-RPT / DNSSEC is in a different league. Cron heartbeats record starts, completions, explicit failures and missed expected pings. DNS drift monitoring catches accidental record edits. Security header scoring (HSTS, CSP, Permissions-Policy, Referrer-Policy, X-Frame-Options) and CAA validation cover the modern security surface that uptime monitoring is structurally blind to. The single-page audit at /check folds nineteen dimensions into one shareable report.
The honest recommendation
Stay on updown.io if you are a single developer monitoring under twenty endpoints with credit pricing that comes out cheap, and you do not care about anything beyond uptime + SSL expiry. Switch to CheckFast if you have ever subscribed to a second monitoring tool — or if you ship transactional email, run cron jobs, or want one place to point your SEO contractor when they ask “how is the site doing.” Both are honest products. The right answer depends on whether breadth or minimalism matters more to you.
Migrate from updown.io in 4 steps
Copy-paste this. We don't make migration painful.
# 1. Hit the updown.io API to dump your check list curl -H "X-API-KEY: $UPDOWN_API_KEY" \ https://updown.io/api/checks > checks.json # 2. Sign up at checkfast.io and open /monitors # Recreate each exported URL through /monitors/new # 3. Recreate alert contacts # Settings -> Notifications -> add Telegram / email # Slack and webhook delivery require Pro or Agency # 4. Pause updown.io checks for one week as a fallback, # exercise expected checks and alert paths, then archive
FAQ
Why switch from updown.io?+
updown.io is loved by a particular kind of indie dev: minimal UI, transparent credit pricing, ridiculously generous free trial. CheckFast is broader — same uptime + SSL + page speed surface plus email deliverability, cron heartbeats and DNS, all on a flat $9/mo plan. If you need just uptime and you love the credit pricing model, stay on updown.io. If you want one bill for everything, switch.
How does updown.io's credit pricing work?+
updown.io charges in credits — roughly $0.50 per check per month at 1-min cadence (as of 2026), with bulk discounts. It is genuinely transparent and cheap for low monitor counts. CheckFast is flat: $9/mo includes 15 monitors, $29/mo includes 50, $79/mo includes 200. The break-even depends on monitor count and cadence.
Does CheckFast match updown.io's minimalism?+
We aim for clean, but not as ascetic. updown.io is famously close to a single-page app with one chart and one toggle. CheckFast has a fuller dashboard because it covers more tools. If you really want one chart and one toggle, updown.io wins on aesthetic minimalism. If one bill for 44 tools matters more, CheckFast wins.
Multi-region testing?+
updown.io has been multi-region for years and runs from a sensible spread of locations. CheckFast is a single-region probe today; multi-region is on the Agency-tier roadmap. If multi-region is a hard requirement, updown.io has the edge.
What about SSL and security headers?+
updown.io tracks SSL expiry (and alerts on it), which is excellent. CheckFast also scores security headers (HSTS, CSP, Permissions-Policy, Referrer-Policy, X-Frame-Options) and CAA records — updown.io does not.
Heartbeat / cron monitoring?+
updown.io does not offer cron heartbeats. CheckFast records start, success and explicit-failure pings and alerts when an expected ping is missed.