SSL Labs is the reference tool for auditing a TLS configuration — protocols, ciphers, chain issues, and the A-to-F grade everyone quotes. It runs when you ask it to. It will not tell you the certificate expired last night.
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Is MonitoringDaddy an SSL Labs alternative?
Only for the continuous half. SSL Labs is a free, on-demand configuration auditor and is better at that than anything we will ever build. We watch the certificate on a schedule and warn before expiry. Most teams should use both — SSL Labs when they change configuration, us for the rest of the year.
An A+ in March says nothing about the certificate that expires in June. Configuration auditing and expiry monitoring are different jobs.
On-demand tools get run at launch and then forgotten, which is exactly when the certificate quietly lapses.
SSL Labs has no concept of telling you something changed — you have to go and look.
Green marks the stronger option on that row. Third-party pricing and limits change without notice — treat the Qualys SSL Labs column as a starting point and confirm current figures on their site before you decide.
| Feature | Qualys SSL Labs | MonitoringDaddy |
|---|---|---|
| TLS configuration grading | Yes — the industry reference, free | No — we do not grade configuration |
| Protocol and cipher analysis | Yes, exhaustive | No |
| Chain and trust issue detection | Yes | No |
| Continuous monitoring | No — on demand only | Yes, on your check interval |
| Certificate expiry alerts | No | Yes — attached to any monitor, no extra allowance |
| Uptime monitoring | No | Yes, on every plan |
| Domain expiry warnings | No | Yes, attached to a monitor |
| Website change detection | No | Yes, with word-level diffs |
| Price | Free | $5/mo for 25 monitors with SSL and domain warnings |
| Alerting of any kind | No | Email, push, Slack, Teams, Discord, Telegram, webhooks |
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 Qualys SSL Labs 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 Qualys SSL Labs is stronger are marked as such rather than quietly omitted.
Details about Qualys SSL Labs 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.
No. We do not analyse protocols, ciphers or chain configuration and we do not produce a grade. SSL Labs does that free and better; use it when you change configuration.
Watch continuously and alert. SSL Labs runs when asked; we check on a schedule and warn as expiry approaches, through email, push, Slack, Teams and the rest.
Yes, and that is the honest recommendation. SSL Labs at configuration change, us for the fifty-one weeks in between.
Yes, entirely, for on-demand scans. Its limitations are that it does not monitor and does not alert, not price.
Configurable per monitor, so you hear about it while renewal is routine rather than urgent.
We check the certificate presented and its expiry. Chain and trust analysis is SSL Labs territory.
No. Expiry warnings attach to a monitor you already have and consume no additional allowance, on every plan including free.
Also included the same way, and it is the other outage you can see coming weeks ahead.
Last updated August 4, 2026 · Written by Amit Gupta, founder of MonitoringDaddy
Set up a monitor on your most important URL and run it alongside Qualys SSL Labs for a week. Free plan, no credit card.