TL;DR: Pingdom is a website monitoring tool built for digital marketers and enterprises, starting at $10/month for 10 monitors. API Status Check is an API monitoring tool built for developers, starting at $1/month per monitor. If you're a solo developer or indie hacker monitoring APIs, you'll save 10x with ASC.
Different Tools, Different Audiences
Let's be clear upfront: Pingdom and API Status Check solve different problems for different people.
Pingdom monitors websites. It checks page load times, simulates user transactions (like checkout flows), tracks real visitor behavior across browsers and devices, and provides detailed performance analytics for marketing teams.
API Status Check monitors APIs. It checks endpoint uptime, response times, status codes, and alerts you when your API is down. No page speed analysis, no Real User Monitoring, no browser scripting—just API monitoring.
The pricing reflects this difference:
- Pingdom: $10-$15/month minimum (10 monitors, 50 SMS alerts)
- API Status Check: $1/month per monitor (unlimited alerts)
For a solo developer monitoring 3 APIs? That's $10/month vs $3/month—a 70% savings.
What Pingdom Does Well
Before we dive into pricing, let's give credit where it's due. Pingdom is an established tool with real strengths:
🌍 100+ Global Monitoring Locations
Pingdom has probes in over 100 locations worldwide, from North America to Asia-Pacific. This means you can test how your site performs in Mumbai, São Paulo, or Sydney—and set up multi-location confirmation before alerting (reducing false positives).
📊 Real User Monitoring (RUM)
Pingdom's RUM gives you live data on how actual visitors experience your site:
- Browser and device breakdown (Chrome vs Safari, mobile vs desktop)
- Geographic performance differences
- Page load times from real users
- Bounce rates and active sessions
This is gold for digital marketing teams tracking campaign performance.
🔄 Transaction Monitoring
Pingdom can simulate complex user journeys using browser scripting:
- Login flows
- Shopping cart checkouts
- Multi-step forms
- Payment processing
You can use their visual web recorder (no coding required) to create these transaction checks.
🏢 Enterprise Features
- Unlimited users per account (great for teams)
- Root cause analysis with traceroute
- Maintenance window scheduling
- Integration with PagerDuty, Slack, webhooks
Verdict: If you're monitoring a website, need visitor analytics, or require transaction monitoring for e-commerce, Pingdom is a solid choice. It's built for that.
Where API Status Check Wins
Now let's talk about where ASC is the better fit:
💰 10x Cheaper for Small Users
Here's the math that matters:
| Scenario | Pingdom Cost | ASC Cost | Your Savings |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 API monitor | $10/mo (forced minimum) | $1/mo | $9/mo saved |
| 3 side projects | $10/mo (forced minimum) | $3/mo | $7/mo saved |
| 10 monitors | $10/mo (50 SMS limit) | $9/mo | Comparable, unlimited alerts |
| 50 monitors | $50-$65/mo | $49/mo | $1-$16/mo saved + unlimited alerts |
| 100 monitors | $95-$124/mo | $99/mo | Up to $25/mo saved |
The killer detail: Pingdom forces you to pay $10/month even if you only need 1 monitor. ASC lets you pay $1/month for that single monitor.
For indie hackers running 3 side projects, that's $84/year vs $36/year—a 57% savings.
"Pingdom's pricing felt a bit steep for my small business. I found a much more affordable alternative that offers everything I need."
— Verified User, Small Business Owner
🎯 Built for APIs, Not Websites
Pingdom was designed in an era when "monitoring" meant checking if your homepage loaded. ASC was built for the API-first world:
- HTTP/HTTPS endpoint checks (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE)
- Status code validation (200, 201, 404, 500, etc.)
- Response time tracking (not page load time—actual API latency)
- JSON response validation (check if specific fields exist/match)
- Header validation (auth tokens, rate limits, etc.)
If you're monitoring a REST API, GraphQL endpoint, or webhook, you don't need page speed waterfalls or Real User Monitoring. You need to know: Is my API up? Is it fast? Did it return the right status code?
That's what ASC does.
"We were expanding into microservices, and Pingdom just wasn't cutting it. We switched to a tool that handled everything from uptime to server health across our entire stack."
— Verified User, CTO at tech startup
📉 Transparent Pricing (No 22-Tier Maze)
Pingdom has 22 pricing tiers for Synthetic Monitoring alone:
- Tier 1: $10/mo for 10 monitors (50 SMS alerts)
- Tier 2: $25/mo for 25 monitors (100 SMS alerts)
- Tier 3: $50/mo for 50 monitors (200 SMS alerts)
- ...all the way to...
- Tier 22: Enterprise pricing for 30,000 monitors
Each tier has different SMS alert limits (50 to 500), annual vs monthly pricing (17% discount), and varying levels of "advanced monitors" for page speed checks.
ASC's pricing:
- $1/month per monitor
- Unlimited alerts (email, SMS, Slack, webhooks)
- No tiers, no minimums, no caps
You know exactly what you'll pay. Monitor 1 API? $1/month. Monitor 100 APIs? $99/month. Simple.
🔔 Unlimited Alerts (vs Pingdom's 50-500 Caps)
Here's a sneaky detail from Pingdom's pricing: SMS alerts are limited.
- Base tier ($10/mo): 50 SMS alerts/month
- Mid tier ($50/mo): 200 SMS alerts/month
- High tier ($95/mo): 350 SMS alerts/month
If you have a critical API that goes down multiple times in a month, you could burn through 50 SMS alerts fast. Want more? You'll need to upgrade to a higher tier.
ASC includes unlimited alerts in every plan:
- Unlimited email alerts
- Unlimited SMS alerts
- Unlimited Slack/webhook notifications
- Unlimited team members
No counting, no caps, no surprise upgrade prompts.
🆓 Free Tier Exists (Pingdom Killed Theirs in 2019)
In February 2019, Pingdom discontinued their free plan. From their announcement:
"To ensure the best possible product experience for SolarWinds® Pingdom® users, and to focus our resources and investment on this next phase of our product development, we will no longer offer our free plans as of February 6, 2019."
The reaction from developers on Reddit (r/devops):
"Been pretty disappointed since their UI update. Anyone have alternatives to Pingdom that they've liked?"
Thousands of free-tier users migrated to UptimeRobot, StatusCake, and other tools.
ASC offers a free tier for developers getting started. Perfect for hobby projects, no credit card required to start.
After Pingdom abandoned free users, we built ASC to be accessible to indie hackers from day one.
Who Should Use Which Tool?
Choose Pingdom If You:
- ✅ Monitor a website (not just APIs)
- ✅ Need Real User Monitoring (live visitor analytics)
- ✅ Require transaction monitoring (checkout flows, login sequences)
- ✅ Want page speed analysis (element-by-element breakdown)
- ✅ Have a marketing team that needs browser/device/geo analytics
- ✅ Have budget for $10+/month and need enterprise features
Example: You run an e-commerce site and need to monitor the checkout flow across different browsers, track page load times for marketing campaigns, and see bounce rates by device type.
Choose API Status Check If You:
- ✅ Monitor APIs (REST, GraphQL, webhooks)
- ✅ Are a solo developer or small team (1-5 people)
- ✅ Run side projects or hobby apps
- ✅ Are bootstrapped and price-conscious
- ✅ Need simple API uptime checks without enterprise bloat
- ✅ Want unlimited alerts without caps
- ✅ Prefer transparent pricing ($1/mo per monitor)
Example: You're an indie hacker building a SaaS product with 5 API endpoints. You need to know if they're up, responding fast, and returning the right status codes. You don't need page speed waterfalls or Real User Monitoring—just API monitoring.
Real User Feedback
Why People Leave Pingdom
From our research across Reddit, Web Hosting Talk, and verified user reviews:
On Price:
"We used to use Pingdom ourselves but they have become really expensive for additional checks."
— Web Hosting Talk Forum"Can become quite expensive, especially at scale."
— Multiple comparison sites
On Feature Limitations:
"Pingdom does the job for basic uptime checks, but I needed something more to dig into user experience and site performance."
— Verified User, E-commerce Manager
On SolarWinds Association:
"Moved to LibreNMS after the SolarWinds fiasco."
— Reddit r/sysadmin (2021)
(Note: Pingdom is owned by SolarWinds, which suffered a major security breach in 2020. Some enterprises reconsidered their vendor relationships after the incident.)
The Bottom Line
Pingdom monitors websites. API Status Check monitors APIs. Know the difference.
If you're a digital marketer monitoring website performance, tracking visitor behavior, or testing transaction flows, Pingdom is built for you. It has Real User Monitoring, browser scripting, and page speed analytics that ASC doesn't offer.
If you're a developer monitoring API uptime, response times, and status codes—and you're tired of paying $10/month for features you don't use—API Status Check is 10x cheaper and purpose-built for your needs.
Pricing Summary
- Pingdom: $10/mo minimum (10 monitors, 50 SMS alerts, website-focused)
- API Status Check: $1/mo per monitor (unlimited alerts, API-focused)
For 1-10 monitors, ASC saves you $7-$91/month. For indie hackers and solo developers, that's the difference between shipping your side project or getting priced out.
Try API Status Check Today
Ready to switch? Start monitoring your APIs in under 60 seconds:
👉 Sign up for free at apistatuscheck.com
- No credit card required
- Free tier available
- $1/month per monitor after that
- Unlimited alerts included
- Cancel anytime
Frequently Asked Questions
Does API Status Check have global monitoring locations like Pingdom?
ASC monitors from multiple strategic locations, though not as many as Pingdom's 100+ locations. For most API monitoring use cases (checking if your endpoint is up and responding), this is sufficient. If you need to test from 50+ specific global locations, Pingdom's network is more extensive.
Can API Status Check monitor websites?
Yes, you can monitor any HTTP/HTTPS endpoint, including website URLs. However, ASC doesn't provide page speed analysis, browser scripting, or Real User Monitoring—it checks uptime and response time. If you need detailed website performance metrics, Pingdom is better suited.
Does API Status Check offer Real User Monitoring (RUM)?
No. ASC is focused on synthetic monitoring (scheduled checks from our probes). We don't track live visitor behavior, browser breakdowns, or user analytics. If you need RUM, Pingdom or similar tools are better fits.
Why is API Status Check so much cheaper?
We focus exclusively on API monitoring without the enterprise features, sales overhead, and website-specific capabilities that drive up costs at larger monitoring platforms. Our streamlined approach means lower prices for developers who just need reliable API uptime checks.
Can I migrate from Pingdom to API Status Check?
Yes! Many customers have successfully migrated their API monitors from Pingdom to ASC. You can export your Pingdom check configurations and recreate them in ASC, or reach out to our team for migration assistance.
What about transaction monitoring and browser scripting?
ASC doesn't currently support browser-based transaction monitoring (like simulating checkout flows). If you need to test multi-step user journeys with JavaScript execution, Pingdom's transaction monitoring is more appropriate. ASC focuses on API endpoint checks (HTTP requests, status codes, response validation).
Ready to save money on API monitoring? Start your free trial today →
Top comments (0)