CertPost prices certificates per account rather than per certificate, which is a genuinely good idea and unbeatable once you are past a few hundred of them. Below that number the question changes: how much of your monitoring is certificates, and what is watching everything else?
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Is MonitoringDaddy a real CertPost alternative?
For a mixed estate, yes. Certificates are a standalone monitor type here with a warning window you set anywhere from 1 to 60 days, and the same allowance covers uptime, domain expiry, page content changes and cron heartbeats. If you are monitoring several hundred certificates and nothing else, CertPost is cheaper and we would say so plainly.
A domain lapse, a silent uptime failure or a changed pricing page all end the same way. Splitting them across tools multiplies dashboards without multiplying what you actually know.
CertPost warns at 30, 14, 7 and 1 day. If a renewal needs procurement sign-off, or if you only want one warning, a fixed schedule is the wrong shape.
Unlimited certificates is a strong offer at 300 certificates and an irrelevant one at 15.
Green marks the stronger option on that row. Third-party pricing and limits change without notice — treat the CertPost column as a starting point and confirm current figures on their site before you decide.
| Feature | CertPost | MonitoringDaddy |
|---|---|---|
| Certificate expiry alerts | Yes — the core product | Yes — standalone SSL monitor type |
| Certificates included | Unlimited on Team ($29/mo) | 25 monitors on $5, 50 on $19, 100 on $34 |
| Full chain checking | Yes — every link in the chain | No — we read the endpoint certificate |
| Warning window | Fixed at 30, 14, 7 and 1 day | Configurable, 1 to 60 days |
| Already-expired certificate alert | Covered by the 1-day warning | Yes — alerts when a certificate has already lapsed |
| Failed certificate check alert | Not stated | Yes — tells you when the check itself stops working |
| Domain expiry monitoring | Yes, on every plan | Yes — standalone type, 1 to 180 day window |
| Uptime monitoring | No | Yes — same allowance |
| Page content change detection | No | Yes — with region selection and noise filtering |
| Cron heartbeat monitoring | No | Yes — same allowance |
| Free plan | 3 certificates, daily checks | No free plan |
| Client status pages | Yes, on Agency ($79/mo) | Status pages on every plan, up to 50 |
Every comparison page on the internet claims the author's product wins on everything. Here is where it does not.
If any of those are load-bearing for your team, staying put is the correct decision and this page has done its job. Monitoring you actually trust beats monitoring that is marginally cheaper.
Six monitor types and one dashboard. No add-on products, no separate SKUs for the features you assumed were included.
HTTP checks from external infrastructure, as often as every 60 seconds, with downtime and recovery alerts. See the uptime setup guide.
A dedicated monitor type with configurable advance warnings, so a certificate never lapses because nobody owned the renewal. See SSL expiry monitoring.
Registration expiry tracked as its own monitor, warning you months ahead. The outage nobody has a runbook for. See domain expiration monitoring.
Alert when a phrase appears or disappears on a page — defacement, stock changes, silent policy edits. See website change detection.
Watch a competitor or supplier price string and get told the moment it moves. See the price monitoring guide.
Public status pages included on every plan, hosted independently of your infrastructure so they stay up when you do not. See hosted status pages.
Alerts from any of these can be routed to email, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord, Telegram, Flock or a generic webhook, and a single monitor can carry several channels at once. Everything is available through the REST API on paid plans, so monitors can be created and torn down programmatically rather than clicked through a form.
Flat monthly tiers. No per-seat charges, no credit top-ups, no usage meters — the number below is the whole bill.
| Plan | Monitors | Fastest interval | Alert channels | API | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 1 | Every 30 minutes | — | $0 | |
| Founding Member first 20 only | 25 | Every 5 minutes | Email + webhook & chat | Yes | $5/mo |
| Basic | 10 | Every 10 minutes | Email + webhook & chat | Yes | $8/mo |
| Growth | 50 | Every 5 minutes | Email + webhook & chat | Yes | $19/mo |
| Pro | 100 | Every 60 seconds | Email + webhook & chat | Yes | $34/mo |
Annual billing is cheaper on every paid tier. The pricing page is the authoritative list.
There is no automated importer — monitors are re-created by hand, or scripted through the API on paid plans. Budget about a minute per monitor.
List every active check: URL, interval, condition and alert recipients. Most teams find monitors nobody needs any more.
Start with revenue-critical URLs. Set the interval, add the condition, attach the channels your team already watches.
Keep CertPost live while the new monitors settle. Compare alerts and confirm nothing is missing.
Move any public status page across, confirm a clean week of overlap, then cancel the old subscription.
This page is written by the team that builds MonitoringDaddy, so treat it as an informed argument rather than a neutral audit. What we can promise is that the claims about our own product are checked against what the software actually does, and the rows where CertPost is stronger are marked as such rather than quietly omitted.
Details about CertPost come from their public pricing and documentation at the time of writing. Monitoring vendors change plan limits and prices frequently and without announcement, so every third-party figure here carries a "verify on their site" caveat and you should take it seriously before making a decision on cost.
One thing worth stating plainly, because most comparison pages fudge it: MonitoringDaddy checks run from our own infrastructure, which is external to yours, but from a single origin rather than a global probe network. That is enough to catch outages and content changes independently of your stack. It is not enough to tell you a site is down in Frankfurt but up in Ohio. If regional verification is a hard requirement, a larger platform will serve you better and we would rather you knew that now.
Found something out of date or wrong? Tell us and we will correct it.
Every recorded change is compared word by word and kept with a before-and-after image. This is the real output, shown with worked example data.
Price fell from $49 to $39, and an annual discount was added.
The item is available again and the basket button returned.
A new subprocessor was added in another jurisdiction.
The free plan sends to one email address. Every paid plan adds the chat and webhook channels below, with 2 to 10 destinations depending on the plan. However many alerts you receive, the price does not change — nothing here is metered or charged per alert.
There are no voice calls and no SMS. If a phone call at 3am is a hard requirement, say so before you subscribe — we would rather tell you now than refund you later.
Yes. SSL is a standalone monitor type here — you point it at a host and it watches the certificate, whether or not you have an uptime monitor on the same site.
You choose, anywhere from 1 to 60 days. We also alert when a certificate has already expired and when the certificate check itself fails, which is the state where a monitor has quietly stopped being a monitor.
No. We read the certificate served at your endpoint. CertPost checks every link, and if an intermediate expires they will catch it and we will not. That is a real difference worth knowing.
Past roughly a hundred certificates, yes, and clearly so — unlimited for $29 beats any per-monitor plan. Below that, $5 a month for 25 monitors of any type covers more ground for less.
Yes, as its own monitor type with a warning window from 1 to 180 days. Both CertPost and we treat a lapsed domain as the same class of problem as a lapsed certificate.
Uptime checks, certificates, domain expiry, page content changes and cron heartbeats all draw from the same count, so you can mix them however you like.
No. CertPost has one covering 3 certificates; we start at $5 a month for 25 monitors.
Daily. CertPost checks hourly on Team and every 15 minutes on Agency. For a date that moves once a year, daily is sufficient — but if you want faster confirmation after a renewal, theirs is quicker.
Last updated August 4, 2026 · Written by Amit Gupta, founder of MonitoringDaddy
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