Last updated: January 2025

UpDog vs Better Uptime

Both tools help teams monitor uptime, but they take different approaches. Here's an honest comparison to help you choose.

Quick comparison

Feature UpDog Better Uptime
Focus Uptime monitoring for teams Monitoring + incident management
Free tier 5 monitors 10 monitors
Starting price $7/month $20/month
Team features Built-in Built-in
Status pages Included Included
On-call scheduling Via integrations Built-in
Incident timelines Basic Full
Escalation policies Via PagerDuty/Opsgenie Built-in
Heartbeat monitoring Yes Yes
SSL monitoring Yes Yes

The key difference

UpDog focuses on uptime monitoring essentials: reliable checks, fast alerts, team collaboration, and status pages. It integrates with existing incident management tools.

Better Uptime combines monitoring with a full incident management platform including on-call schedules, escalation policies, and incident timelines.

Choose UpDog if:

  • You need focused uptime monitoring
  • You already use PagerDuty, Opsgenie, or similar
  • You want simpler pricing ($7/mo vs $20/mo)
  • You prefer fewer features done well
  • Your team doesn't need built-in on-call scheduling

Choose Better Uptime if:

  • You want monitoring and incidents in one tool
  • You need built-in on-call scheduling
  • You want incident timelines and escalation
  • You don't already have incident management tools
  • You prefer a single vendor for everything

Detailed comparison

Monitoring capabilities

Both tools offer solid monitoring fundamentals: HTTP(S) checks, keyword monitoring, SSL certificate tracking, and heartbeat/cron monitoring. UpDog and Better Uptime are comparable here—the differences are in the surrounding features.

Team collaboration

Both offer multi-user organizations with proper permissions. Better Uptime extends this with on-call schedules and escalation policies. UpDog keeps it simple and lets you handle on-call through dedicated tools like PagerDuty if needed.

Status pages

Both include status pages with custom domain support. Better Uptime's status pages integrate deeply with their incident management. UpDog's status pages are straightforward and automatically reflect monitor status.

Alert integrations

Both support Slack, email, SMS, and webhooks. Better Uptime has its own PagerDuty-like escalation built in. UpDog integrates with your existing PagerDuty, Opsgenie, or similar tools.

Pricing

UpDog starts at $7/month. Better Uptime starts at $20/month. The price difference reflects Better Uptime's broader feature set—you're paying for incident management capabilities whether you use them or not.

The bottom line

If you want focused uptime monitoring with team features and status pages, UpDog delivers that at a lower price point while integrating with your existing tools.

If you want monitoring combined with full incident management in a single platform, Better Uptime provides that—at a higher price.

Neither is objectively "better"—it depends on whether you value simplicity and focused tools, or prefer an all-in-one platform.

FAQ

Yes. UpDog starts at $7/month while Better Uptime starts at $20/month. UpDog focuses on monitoring; Better Uptime includes incident management which accounts for the price difference.

Yes. UpDog integrates with PagerDuty so you can use UpDog for monitoring and PagerDuty for on-call scheduling and escalation.

The core monitoring capabilities are similar. Both offer HTTP checks, keyword monitoring, SSL tracking, and heartbeats. Better Uptime's advantage is in incident management, not monitoring itself.

Related comparisons

Try UpDog free

Focused uptime monitoring for teams. Simpler. More affordable.

Start Monitoring Free
  • 5 free monitors
  • $7/mo starting price
  • Status pages included
  • Integrates with PagerDuty