Free vs Paid: Save Money, Stay Up

Monitoring key, but paid not always worth it. When free wins, when upgrade.

Landscape

Free now has paid features.

Free (exit1.dev):

• Unlimited sites
• 1-min checks
• SSL
• Webhooks
• API
• Terminal UI
• No card
• Free

Others: UptimeRobot 50/5-min, Pingdom 1/1-min, StatusCake 10/5-min.

Paid:

• Analytics
• Collab
• SMS
• Phone
• Custom
• Support
• SLAs

Compare

Monitoring:

Feature	Free (exit1.dev)	Paid
Checks	1 min	30s-1 min
Sites	Unlimited	100-1000+
SSL	✅	✅
Headers	✅	✅
API	✅	✅
Webhooks	✅	✅
Email	✅	✅
SMS	❌	✅
Phone	❌	✅
Metrics	Basic	Advanced
History	30 days	1-2 years
Dashboards	❌	✅

Notifications: Free: Email, webhooks. Paid: +SMS, phone, escalation, schedules, incident tools.

API/Integrations: Free (exit1.dev):

const resp = await fetch('https://api.exit1.dev/websites', {
  headers: { 'Authorization': 'Bearer KEY' }
});

Paid:

const client = new API({
  key: 'KEY',
  features: ['performance', 'analytics', 'team']
});
await client.createIncident({
  title: 'Down',
  severity: 'critical',
  assignee: 'team'
});

Free When

• 1-10 sites
• Basic uptime/SSL
• Simple notifications
• Budget tight
• Personal/small biz
• Testing

Example: E-comm with 5 sites. exit1.dev free: 99.9% uptime, $0.

Upgrade When

• 10+ sites
• Team collab
• Analytics
• Phone/SMS
• Custom
• Enterprise
• High stakes

Example: SaaS with 50 portals. Pingdom $199/mo: Reduced downtime 40%.

ROI

(Hourly revenue * downtime hours) = loss.

Framework

Questions:

1. Sites? 1-10 free, 10+ paid.
2. Budget? $0-50 free, $50+ paid.
3. Team? Solo free, large paid.
4. Critical? Low free, high paid.
5. Analytics? Basic free, detailed paid.

Matrix:

Factor	Free	Paid	Score
Sites	1-10 (3)	10+ (1)	___
Budget	$0-50 (3)	$50+ (1)	___
Team	1-3 (3)	4+ (1)	___
Critical	Low (3)	High (1)	___
Analytics	Basic (3)	Advanced (1)	___

12-15 free, 5-11 paid.

Paid Options

Pingdom: $15-199/mo, perf focus.

UptimeRobot: $7-199/mo, budget rich.

StatusCake: $20-200/mo, collab/reporting.

SolarWinds: $100-500/mo, enterprise.

Decision

Free often wins. Try exit1.dev.

Related: 101, Get Started, Best Service, Best Practices

Sources

• Google SRE Book: Monitoring Distributed Systems — https://sre.google/sre-book/monitoring-distributed-systems/
• Wikipedia: Synthetic monitoring — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_monitoring

Recommended Free Monitoring Resources

• Free Uptime Monitor Checklist – Step-by-step actions to configure a free uptime monitor that catches incidents fast.
• Best Free Uptime Monitoring Tools (2025) – Compare the strongest free uptime monitor platforms and when to upgrade.
• Free Website Monitoring Tools 2025 Guide – Evaluate which free website monitor fits your stack and alerting needs.
• Free Website Monitoring for Developers – See how engineering teams automate alerts, SLO tracking, and reporting with a free website monitor.