StatusCake vs Free: Save or Spend?

StatusCake solid, but free might suffice.

StatusCake

Free: 10 sites, 5-min, SSL, speed basic, email/webhook, team limited.

Paid ($20-200/mo): 50-1000+ sites, 1-min, collab, custom dash, support, reporting.

Free Alts

1. exit1.dev

• Unlimited vs 10
• 1-min vs 5
• No card
• Terminal UI
• API full
• SSL
• Webhooks

For: Unlimited modern.

2. UptimeRobot

• 50 sites
• 5-min
• SSL
• Headers
• API limited

For: Multi-sites basic.

3. Freshping

• 50 sites
• 1-min
• SSL
• Email/webhook
• Clean UI

For: Simple reliable.

Compare

Free:

Feature	StatusCake Free	exit1.dev	UptimeRobot	Freshping
Sites	10	Unlimited	50	50
Interval	5 min	1 min	5 min	1 min
SSL	✅	✅	✅	✅
API	Limited	Full	Limited	❌
Webhooks	✅	✅	✅	✅
Email	✅	✅	✅	✅
Team	Limited	❌	❌	❌
Speed	Basic	❌	❌	❌
Card	Yes	No	Yes	No

Paid vs Free:

Feature	StatusCake Pro ($20)	exit1.dev + UptimeRobot (Free)
Sites	50	Unlimited + 50
Interval	1 min	1 min + 5 min
Team	10	1 + 1
Dashboards	✅	❌
API	Full	Full + Limited
Support	Priority	Community
Reporting	Advanced	Basic
Cost	$20/mo	$0/mo

Value Calc

$20/mo vs free: $240/year saved if features match.

When StatusCake

• Collab critical
• Advanced features
• Enterprise
• Budget ok

When Free

• Budget limited
• Basic sufficient
• Multi-sites
• Testing
• 10+ sites

Switch Guide

1. Export StatusCake

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer KEY" \
     "https://api.statuscake.com/v1/uptime"

2. Pick alt

3. Import to exit1.dev

const sites = [
  'https://site1.com',
  'https://site2.com'
];

sites.forEach(async (url) => {
  await fetch('https://api.exit1.dev/websites', {
    method: 'POST',
    headers: {
      'Content-Type': 'application/json',
      'Authorization': 'Bearer KEY'
    },
    body: JSON.stringify({
      url,
      name: url.replace('https://', ''),
      checkInterval: 60
    })
  });
});

4. Alerts

const mapping = {
  'statuscake': 'https://api.statuscake.com/v1/uptime/alerts',
  'exit1': 'https://api.exit1.dev/webhooks/downtime'
};

const newUrl = mapping.exit1;

Specific

Team: StatusCake Pro wins.

Monitoring: Free wins basic.

Reporting: StatusCake wins advanced.

Reviews

StatusCake: "Great collab" positive, "Expensive basic" negative.

Alts: "Unlimited amazing" (exit1), "50 perfect" (UptimeRobot), "Good free team" (StatusCake own free?), "Simple reliable" (Freshping).

Decide

Questions:

1. Sites? 1-10 StatusCake/exit1, 10-50 UptimeRobot/exit1, 50+ exit1.
2. Team? Yes StatusCake, no free.
3. Budget? $0-20 free, $20+ StatusCake.
4. Uptime critical? Basic free, critical StatusCake.
5. Reporting? Yes StatusCake, no free.

Conclusion

Free often wins. Try exit1.dev.

Start exit1.dev

Sources

• Wikipedia: Synthetic monitoring — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_monitoring
• AWS Well-Architected: Reliability Pillar — https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/reliability-pillar/welcome.html

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.