Pingdom is an enterprise-grade hosted monitor with enterprise pricing and closed source. If you mainly need reliable up/down, response-time, TLS-expiry, and incident tracking, Pulsy delivers that as open-source software under AGPL-3.0 — free forever on your own infrastructure, or fully managed on Pulsy Cloud for a flat monthly price.
- Open source (AGPL-3.0) — self-host free forever instead of paying enterprise subscription tiers.
- Published Cloud allowances; compare the check volume and RUM features you need.
- Incidents, status pages, and multi-channel alerts included without enterprise add-ons.
- 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 | Pingdom |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free forever — you run it (AGPL-3.0) | Free tier, paid plans from $12/mo | Paid subscription tiers |
| 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 Pingdom (SolarWinds) |
| Pricing model | No software subscription; capacity depends on your infrastructure | Flat plans | Priced by checks and RUM page views; unlimited users |
| Incident tracking | Built in (ongoing → resolved) | Built in (ongoing → resolved) | Built in |
| Global check locations | Wherever you deploy it | Managed by Pulsy | Large global network |
| Status pages | Included, custom domains | Free: 1 default-domain page; Pro: 5 and Team: 25, with custom domains | Included |
| 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, covering up/down, response-time, TLS-expiry, incidents, and status pages. Self-host it free forever, or run Pulsy Cloud from $12/mo instead of enterprise subscription tiers.
For core website monitoring — HTTP checks, response time, certificate expiry, incident grouping, notifications, and status pages — yes. Pingdom adds a large global probe network and real-user monitoring, which Pulsy does not attempt.
Self-hosted, checks run from wherever you deploy Pulsy — deploy more than one instance if you want more than one vantage point. Pingdom's large managed probe network is a genuine advantage if multi-region checking is the requirement.
Cloud stores monitoring data on Pulsy infrastructure; self-hosting stores it in your database. Configured notification providers receive the alert content sent through them. Native JSON export covers supported configuration only, not history or secrets.
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.