People who search "pingdom alternative" are usually in one of three places:
- The price at renewal surprised them.
- They only ever used the uptime checks and are paying for a suite.
- They noticed the product now carries the SolarWinds name and want to know whether anything changed.
The rest of this post covers what Pingdom publishes today, what it costs at a few sizes, and what to compare when you look elsewhere.
Everything about Pingdom below is from Pingdom's own pages, read October 4, 2026: the pricing page at pingdom.com and the product page at solarwinds.com/pingdom.
Is Pingdom changing now that it is part of SolarWinds?
Pingdom's published pages announce no change. The pages are published under the SolarWinds name. The title of the product page reads "Pingdom - Uptime, Website, & Performance Monitoring | SolarWinds". The pricing page footer reads "© 2026 SolarWinds Worldwide, LLC", and the pricing page promotes "SolarWinds Observability SaaS" and "SolarWinds Pingdom Enterprise" alongside the plans.
We found no announcement on those pages that Pingdom's plans, prices or features are changing, and no end-of-sale or migration notice. Nothing in this post claims a change. If you are searching because your own renewal, login or invoice changed, the notice you received is the authority on that, not a blog post.
What do Pingdom's plans cost?
Pingdom's uptime bundles run from $18 to $149 a month for 10 to 100 checks. Pingdom sells synthetic monitoring (uptime checks, plus a separate count of "advanced" checks) and real user monitoring as separate calculators. The synthetic monitoring calculator on the pricing page lists bundles of uptime checks, advanced checks and SMS alerts. These are the first four, with the monthly price and the price per month when paying annually, as they appear in the page's own calculator data:
| Bundle | Monthly payment | Annual payment (per month) |
|---|---|---|
| 10 uptime, 1 advanced, 50 SMS | $18 | $16.50 |
| 25 uptime, 4 advanced, 100 SMS | $40 | $36.33 |
| 50 uptime, 10 advanced, 200 SMS | $78 | $71.50 |
| 100 uptime, 20 advanced, 350 SMS | $149 | $136.42 |
The ladder continues up to 30,000 uptime checks. The product page separately says "Starts at $10 per month", which does not match the $18 entry bundle on the pricing page. We could not reconcile the two from the published pages.
Both pages say a 30-day free trial is available, and the product page's FAQ says that if you cancel within 30 days of signing up you will not be charged. Pingdom's own pages describe uptime checks as running every minute, from "over 60 global polling locations" on the product page. The main site says "100+" in another place, so we are not stating a single number.
What does a 25-check plan cost a year?
The 25-check bundle costs $480 a year paid monthly and $436 paid annually:
- Paid monthly: $40 x 12 = $480 a year.
- Paid annually: $36.33 x 12 = $436 a year (the page's annual price per month is about 11/12 of the monthly price, which reads as one month free).
For 50 checks the same math gives $78 x 12 = $936 monthly, or $71.50 x 12 = $858 annually. At 100 checks it is $149 x 12 = $1,788, or $136.42 x 12 = $1,637.
Two things to keep in mind. First, the bundle includes an SMS count (100 on the 25-check bundle), and the pricing page does not say what happens when you use more than the bundle. Second, real user monitoring is priced on a separate ladder by pageviews (from 100,000 pageviews at $18 a month on the page), so a team that wants both is adding two lines.
How do you compare Pingdom alternatives?
Skip the feature list and compare the three things you actually use:
- How many checks, and how often. If you have 20 to 50 websites and APIs and a one-minute interval is enough, many tools cover you. Our post on how often uptime monitoring should check explains why the interval matters less than where the checks run from.
- Where alerts go. SMS and phone calls are metered differently from vendor to vendor. Some bundle a count (as Pingdom does), some sell credits, some include them. Count how many you send in a bad month.
- Whether you need the rest of the suite. If transaction monitoring and real user monitoring are in daily use, an uptime-only tool is a downgrade. If you only look at the uptime report, you are paying for capability you do not touch.
Two other hosted options publish their free plans openly. UptimeRobot's free plan lists 50 monitors at a five-minute interval. Better Stack's free plan lists 10 monitors and heartbeats with a status page. We go through the UptimeRobot limits in the next post in this series.
Where RealUptime fits
Uptime checks come with every RealUptime Status plan, alongside the status page. The plans are:
| Plan | Price | Monitors | Check interval | Regions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 10 | 60 seconds | 4 |
| Growth | $28.99/month ($289.90/year) | 25 | 60 seconds | 8 |
| Scale | $78.99/month ($789.90/year) | 150 | 30 seconds | 10 |
The Free plan checks from US-East, US-West, Europe and Asia-Pacific. For the 25-check example above, Growth covers it at $28.99 x 12 = $347.88 a year paid monthly, or $289.90 billed annually, against Pingdom's $480 and $436. The 50-check example needs Scale at $78.99 x 12 = $947.88 a year paid monthly, or $789.90 billed annually, against Pingdom's $936 and $858: $11.88 more than Pingdom paid monthly and $68.10 less billed annually. At 100 checks Scale still covers it, against Pingdom's $1,788 and about $1,637. Email, Slack, PagerDuty and webhook alerts are included on every plan, and the REST API, CLI and Terraform provider are open on every plan including Free.
The gaps against Pingdom are real: we have no real user monitoring and no page speed product, and our scope is availability, not performance suites. RealUptime Monitor also runs an agent for servers behind a firewall, which is a different job from the website checks priced above.
When is Pingdom the right choice?
Pingdom is the right choice for teams that need transaction and real user monitoring from one vendor. If you already use transaction monitoring and real user monitoring together, want one vendor for both, and an SMS bundle fits how your team gets paged, Pingdom covers that. It also suits teams whose company already buys SolarWinds products and wants a single vendor relationship. The comparison page lists the differences feature by feature (RealUptime vs Pingdom), and if you decide to move, there is a migration guide. For how a status page and a monitor relate before you pick, read status page vs uptime monitor.
If you want to see how your own sites look from four regions before deciding anything, start RealUptime free with 10 monitors and no card. See pricing for every plan.
Sources
- Pingdom pricing, read October 4, 2026 (synthetic monitoring and RUM calculators, trial, SolarWinds branding).
- Pingdom product page, read October 4, 2026 ("Starts at $10 per month", 30-day cancellation FAQ, polling locations).
- Pingdom home page, read October 4, 2026 (30-day free trial, locations).
- UptimeRobot pricing and Better Stack pricing, both read October 4, 2026.
- RealUptime plans, realuptime.io/pricing, and the plan definitions in the product, read October 9, 2026.