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Oh Dear

How is Oh Dear different from open-source monitoring?

Zabbix, Nagios, Prometheus and similar tools are powerful, but you host them, patch them, and add every website check yourself. Oh Dear is the all-in-one, fully-hosted alternative: every check built in, nothing to maintain.

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Oh Dear vs open-source monitoring
  • Bitmovin
  • HBO Nordic
  • Obsidian
  • Laravel
  • Fathom Analytics
  • PHP 8
  • Stanford University
  • Takeaway.com
  • IGN
  • VRT NWS
  • spatie
the quick verdict
Choose Oh Dear if you want uptime, SSL/TLS, DNS, full-site crawling, cron checks and Lighthouse in one place, with unlimited users and one predictable bill.
Choose Uptime Kuma if you want free and open-source, and you are happy to host and maintain it yourself.
Choose Zabbix if you need deep, customisable infrastructure and network monitoring and have the ops team to run and tune a Zabbix server.
Choose Nagios if you want the proven, plugin-driven classic and do not mind config files and manual upkeep.
Choose Icinga if you like the Nagios plugin ecosystem but want a more modern core and web UI, and can self-host it.
Choose Prometheus if you are building a metrics-driven stack with Prometheus, Blackbox Exporter, Alertmanager and Grafana and want probes in it.
Choose Checkmk if you want a self-hosted monitor with everything included with many built-in checks and will run the Raw edition yourself.
Hosted, not self-built

Everything self-hosted monitors make you build

Hosted, zero maintenance

1. Hosted, zero maintenance

We run the servers, probes, upgrades and global checking locations. There is nothing to install, patch, scale or look after.

All-in-one, nothing to add

2. All-in-one, nothing to add

Uptime, SSL, DNS, full-site crawl, Lighthouse, cron and status pages, built in. No plugins, exporters or extra services to connect.

Checks self-hosted tools lack

3. Checks self-hosted tools lack

Natural-language AI checks, whole-site broken-link and mixed-content crawling, real Lighthouse audits and domain expiry, none of them included in self-hosted monitors.

Oh Dear compared with open-source monitoring

One table. Honest, where a self-hosted tool genuinely fits better, we say so.

Website monitoring feature comparison
oh dear Uptime Kuma Zabbix Nagios Icinga Prometheus Checkmk
Uptime monitoring? Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Ping monitoring? Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
TCP port monitoring? Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Performance monitoring? Yes Partial Yes Partial Partial Partial Yes
Lighthouse audits? Yes No No No No No No
Certificate health (SSL/TLS)? Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Partial Yes
Broken links & mixed content? Yes No No Partial No No No
Sitemap monitoring? Yes No No Partial No No No
DNS monitoring? Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
DNS blocklist monitoring? Yes No Partial Partial Partial No No
Domain expiry monitoring? Yes Yes Partial Partial Partial No Partial
Scheduled-task / cron? Yes Yes Partial Partial Partial Partial Partial
Application health checks? Yes Partial Yes Partial Partial Partial Partial
Port scanner? Yes No Partial Partial Partial No No
AI-powered checks? Yes No No No No No No
Notifications & integrations? Yes Yes Yes Yes Partial Yes Yes
Status pages? Yes Yes Partial No No No No
Automated client reports? Yes No Partial Partial Partial No No
Custom branding (logo & colours)? Yes Partial Partial Partial Partial No Partial
Scoped client access? Yes No Partial Partial Partial Partial Partial
Single sign-on (SSO)? Yes No Yes No Partial No No
Hosted & managed for you? Yes No No No No No No
Zero setup & maintenance? Yes No No No No No No
All-in-one, nothing to bolt on? Yes Partial No No No No No
Entry price? €15 Free Free Free Free Free Free
orange = leads this row green = has it grey = doesn't lead

Sourced from each vendor's docs · June 2026

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Being honest

When self-hosting is the better choice

If you have the team and the time, open-source can be the right answer. Here's when.

Uptime Kuma

Free & self-hosted

Best if you want open-source and do not mind hosting and maintaining it yourself: fast intervals, but no on-call or full-site crawl.

Zabbix

Deep infrastructure monitoring

Best if you need powerful, highly-customisable infrastructure, network and server monitoring and have the team to deploy, template and maintain it.

Nagios

Battle-tested & plugin-driven

Best if you want the long-established standard with a huge plugin catalogue and are comfortable setting it up and maintaining it via config files.

Icinga

Modern Nagios-compatible core

Best if you want Nagios plugin compatibility with a more modern engine and web interface, and have the team to run it.

Prometheus

Metrics-first observability stack

Best if you are standardising on Prometheus for metrics and alerting and will assemble Blackbox Exporter, Alertmanager and Grafana for uptime probes yourself.

Checkmk

Everything included, self-hosted

Best if you want a self-hosted monitor with many built-in checks included and accept that SSO and scale features are commercial-only.

And we mean it. We run Zabbix ourselves to monitor Oh Dear's own infrastructure, so we know first-hand how powerful it is. That power just comes with the knowledge to set it up and the upkeep to keep it running. If that's not where you want your team spending its time, that's exactly where we come in.

Why we built it this way

One tool instead of five

Every monitoring tool started by answering one question: is the site up? Then the questions kept coming. Is the SSL certificate about to expire? Did a DNS change break email? Did last night's deploy leave forty broken links? Did the nightly backup cron actually run? Is the homepage still fast?

Most tools answer one of those and sell you an integration for the rest, or leave you running a second, third and fourth subscription. You end up combining alerts from five dashboards yourself.

Oh Dear watches your whole website from one place, so the thing that breaks at 2am is something you already had a check for.

That's what the table really shows. It isn't that the others can't check uptime, everyone checks uptime. It's that everything around uptime is where sites actually break, and that's the part we refused to make you assemble yourself.

Go deeper

Compare Oh Dear head-to-head

Pick the open-source tool you're actually weighing us against.

vs Uptime Kuma Free, open-source uptime monitoring you host yourself. Compare → vs Zabbix Heavyweight open-source infrastructure monitoring. Compare → vs Nagios The classic open-source monitoring veteran. Compare → vs Icinga A modern, Nagios-compatible open-source monitor. Compare → vs Prometheus Open-source metrics and alerting you assemble yourself. Compare → vs Checkmk Open-source infrastructure monitoring with a free Raw edition. Compare → vs Atlassian Statuspage A status page, not a monitor. See how the two compare. Compare →

Don't take our word for it

We built an incredibly powerful website monitor we know you'll love. Don't just take our word for it, here's what our users think:

Oh Dear makes monitoring a breeze.
Oliver Smith-Aichbichler profile
Oliver Smith-Aichbichler CEO
It's been great—I use it across multiple teams and works amazingly.
Ryan Scherler profile
Ryan Scherler Developer
Really good monitoring tool!
Fred Bradley profile
Fred Bradley Developer
Worth every penny.
Matt Robitaille profile
Matt Robitaille Director of Development
Oh Dear allows us to always stay a step ahead of our customers regarding the performance and uptime of the website we develop. This builds trust that their application is in save hands with us.
Niels Van Renselaar profile
Niels Van Renselaar Co-Founder Underdock
Oh Dear keeps you calm and alerts you instantly!
Mark de Vries profile
Mark de Vries CTO
Oh Dear is a must-have for all web devs.
Casey Dwyer profile
Casey Dwyer Founder
Oh Dear is a really nice monitoring tool! Just subscribed directly after the beta invite.
Lukas Kämmerling profile
Lukas Kämmerling First ever Oh Dear Customer
Perfect for 90% of monitoring needs.
Harrison Brown profile
Harrison Brown CTO

Frequently asked questions

Target rings Target rings

Isn't open-source monitoring free?

The software is free, but you pay in servers, setup, configuration, security patching and the engineering time to run it, plus the risk that your monitoring goes down together with your own infrastructure. Oh Dear is fully hosted from €15/month with nothing to maintain.

Can't I just self-host and get the same thing?

Self-hosted monitors like Zabbix, Nagios, Icinga, Prometheus and Checkmk are powerful for infrastructure, but website-specific checks (full-site crawl, mixed content, sitemap, real Lighthouse, domain expiry, AI checks) usually need plugins, exporters or custom scripts, or simply aren't possible. Oh Dear includes them all as standard.

What about Uptime Kuma?

Uptime Kuma is a lovely, simple open-source uptime monitor, but you still host and maintain it, and it doesn't crawl your whole site, run Lighthouse, monitor your sitemap or offer AI checks. Oh Dear gives you those without running anything yourself.

Do I lose control by going hosted?

You keep full control of what's monitored and how you're alerted; you just don't run the infrastructure. You also get checks from multiple global locations, independent of your own servers, so a problem with your stack doesn't take your monitoring down with it.
See all other FAQ items →

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Not convinced yet? Need help?
Get in touch via support@ohdear.app.