Oh Dear Alternatives in 2026: Cheaper Ways to Monitor Uptime and SSL

Updated September 2, 2026 · 6 min read

Oh Dear, built in Belgium by two well-known developers from the Laravel community, has earned its reputation. Every plan includes every feature — no feature tiers, no per-client fees — and the only thing that changes between plans is how many sites you watch. For agencies responsible for dozens of client sites, that's an honest model and a genuinely useful product.

But people search for alternatives for predictable reasons:

• Per-site pricing punishes small portfolios. A freelancer watching 4–5 of their own projects jumps straight past the 2-site Solo plan to Freelance at €49/month — €588/year to check sites that fit on one screen.
• The bill grows with success. Every new client site adds cost forever. There is no "own it" option.
• Feature depth you may not need. Broken-link crawlers, Lighthouse runs, DNS monitoring and white-label client reports are valuable — if you sell them. If you just want to know when your own site is down, they're noise you pay monthly for.

The quick comparison

Prices are indicative list prices as of September 2026 and change — check each vendor's site for current numbers.

When Oh Dear is the right choice

To be fair: if you run an agency, need proof of site health for clients, want branded status pages and scheduled reports per client, or depend on broken-link detection across large sites, Oh Dear's bundle is worth paying for. Nothing on this page matches its breadth, and its checks run whether or not your laptop is open.

The alternatives below are for a narrower job: a handful of websites, notification when one is down or a certificate is about to expire, without another subscription line item.

1. UptimeRobot — the practical free option

Fifty monitors at five-minute intervals with email alerts cost nothing. Note that the free tier is non-commercial-use-only since late 2024 — fine for personal projects, not for client work. The Solo plan ($7–$13/mo) adds SMS, 1-minute intervals and status pages. Full upgrade path in our UptimeRobot alternatives guide.

2. Uptime Kuma — unlimited if you have a server

Self-host Kuma on a cheap VPS (~$5/mo): unlimited monitors, dashboards, alerts via email, Telegram, Slack and more. The trade-off is maintaining a server. If you already run Docker somewhere, this is the best value option. Full comparison: Uptime Kuma vs a desktop monitor.

3. DeskUptime — $19 once, unlimited URLs, no server

A different trade-off entirely: the monitor runs on the computer you already work on. No cloud account, no per-site tiers, no renewal. It checks any URL — WordPress, Shopify, Webflow, hand-written HTML, anything:

npx github:mahope/deskuptime check https://yoursite.com

# ✔ https://yoursite.com
#   HTTP 200 OK · 142 ms · SSL valid for 74 days

Leave it watching during your workday:

npx github:mahope/deskuptime watch https://yoursite.com --interval 300

The honest limits: it can't check while your computer sleeps, and it verifies from one location — yours — not from global regions. There's no broken-link crawler or status page builder. But for the everyday question "are my sites up right now?", it removes both the recurring bill and the third party. The CLI core is free and open; the desktop app adds background monitoring, native notifications and unlimited URLs for a $19 one-time license. No renewal, ever.

Which alternative should you pick?

Try DeskUptime free right now — no account needed:

npx github:mahope/deskuptime check https://yoursite.com

See DeskUptime →