Better Stack combines monitoring, on-call and status communication, with a free tier, paid responder licenses and capacity add-ons. Pulsy offers HTTP, DNS, TCP and heartbeat monitoring with individually owned accounts. Choose self-hosting or a Cloud plan with published allowances; the Team plan does not create a shared workspace.
- Open source (AGPL-3.0) — self-host free forever, with no seat count and no licence key.
- No per-seat pricing. Pulsy Cloud is flat plans; self-hosted has no bill at all.
- Public status pages are supported. Cloud Free includes one page on the default domain; Pro includes five and Team 25, with custom domains on Pro/Team. Self-hosted deployments support custom domains.
- Localized dashboard in five languages with full right-to-left support.
Pulsy supports HTTP, DNS, TCP and interval-based job heartbeats. Cloud capacities and API, channel, reporting and domain access depend on the plan. Self-hosting has no subscription cap on monitors or status pages; practical capacity depends on server resources, workload and retention. Check the destination release for supported features before migrating.
On narrow screens, scroll the table sideways to compare all columns. Keyboard: focus the table region and use the arrow keys.
| Feature | Pulsy (self-hosted) | Pulsy Cloud | Better Stack |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free forever — you run it (AGPL-3.0) | Free tier, paid plans from $12/mo | Free tier; paid responder licenses and usage add-ons |
| Source code | Open source, AGPL-3.0 | Managed Pulsy service; verify release compatibility before migrating | Proprietary |
| Where your data lives | Your own infrastructure | Hosted by Pulsy; configuration-only JSON export (not a full backup) | Hosted by Better Stack |
| Pricing model | No software subscription; capacity depends on your infrastructure | Flat plans | Responder licenses, monitor capacity and optional add-ons |
| On-call scheduling | Not included — alerts to your channels | Not included — alerts to your channels | Included |
| Status pages | Included, custom domains | Free: 1 default-domain page; Pro: 5 and Team: 25, with custom domains | Included |
| Notification channels | Email, webhook, Slack, Discord, Telegram and optional WhatsApp gateway | Email, webhook, Slack, Discord and Telegram; WhatsApp on Team | Many integrations |
| Dashboard | Localized (5 languages, RTL) | Localized (5 languages, RTL) | Check the vendor’s current language support |
Native JSON import/export transfers supported monitor configuration, not a full account backup. History, private request values, heartbeat tokens, publication settings and recipient addresses are excluded. Re-enter secrets and check destination compatibility before importing.
Yes. Pulsy is open source under AGPL-3.0-or-later and covers uptime, TLS-expiry, incident grouping, notifications, and status pages. Self-host it free forever, or use Pulsy Cloud on flat plans if you prefer managed hosting.
Cloud plans have fixed prices and published allowances. The advertised Team seats do not create shared monitors or a team workspace: each account owns its own resources. Self-hosting has no software subscription; you provide the infrastructure.
Pulsy groups consecutive failures into incidents with an ongoing → resolved lifecycle and notifies your channels. It focuses on monitoring and status; it is not a full on-call scheduling suite, so if rotations and escalation policies are the point of your purchase, Better Stack does more.
Public status pages are supported. Cloud Free includes one page on the default domain; Pro includes five and Team 25, with custom domains on Pro/Team. Self-hosted deployments support custom domains.
Track Linux host CPU, RAM, swap, filesystem use, load and uptime alongside website checks. Sustained resource pressure and a disconnected agent become actionable incidents.
Create a server monitor, then run its one-command systemd installer or Docker Compose setup. The agent reports over outbound HTTPS; Linux amd64 and arm64 are supported.
Default thresholds are 90% for CPU, RAM and each filesystem: 3 violating reports to alert, 2 healthy reports to recover. Missing reports cause an outage after 3 intervals. RAM alerts are not confirmed OOM events.
Available on every Cloud plan. Each server uses one monitor slot. Reports default to 60 seconds, subject to the plan’s minimum interval; history follows plan retention.
Explore Linux server monitoringStart with one website or Linux server. Understand the incident and know what to tell your customers.