StatusPulse vs Better Stack
Better Stack (formerly Better Uptime) is one of the best-looking monitoring + status-page tools on the market. StatusPulse plays in the same league on polish, adds deeper probe types (gRPC, WebSocket, Postgres, SMTP/IMAP round-trip), and runs at about about a third of the price at the team tier.
Prices and feature lists last verified 2026-05-21. Vendor pricing can change — check both pricing pages before deciding.
At a glance
~70%
Cheaper at team tier
StatusPulse Pro: $19/mo. Better Stack (uptime + status page bundle): ~$60-90/mo depending on how you slice the Uptime / Logs add-ons. Same job, less spend.
11
Probe types built in
StatusPulse: HTTP, gRPC Health, WebSocket, Postgres, MySQL, SQL Server, Redis, DNS, SSL, Domain expiry, SMTP/IMAP. Better Stack covers HTTP/Ping/Port/Keyword/SSL/DNS but no native gRPC/DB/WebSocket/Email probes today.
US or EU
Hosting region
StatusPulse tenants are provisioned in either US or EU Azure regions. Better Stack runs from EU + US infrastructure but the region choice isn't surfaced per tenant in the same way.
Pricing for a typical team
A team running ~15-30 probes + a public status page on a custom domain, email + Slack alerts, PDF reports. Annual pricing where each vendor offers a discount.
| StatusPulse | Better Stack | |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | 5 probes, 1 status page | 10 monitors, status page on subdomain |
| Entry paid | Starter $5 / mo | Freelancer $29 / mo |
| Team paid | Pro $19 / mo | Team $60-90 / mo (with Uptime + Status add-ons) |
| Custom domain + branding | Pro+ included | Team+ included |
| On-call rotations / escalation | Watchers + groups (no rotation builder) | Full rotation builder |
| Log management | No | Yes (separate Better Stack Logs product) |
| AI incident summaries | Pro+ included | Not yet |
Better Stack's headline number can look comparable on the entry tier, but the practical bill grows fast once you add their Logs product, on-call seats, and additional monitors. StatusPulse keeps the bundle simple — one price covers monitoring, status page, branding, AI summaries, and reports.
Feature matrix
| Feature | StatusPulse | Better Stack |
|---|---|---|
| Monitoring | ||
| HTTP / HTTPS probes | Free+ | Yes |
| Ping (ICMP) | Starter+ (IPv4 + IPv6) | Yes |
| TCP port | Starter+ | Yes |
| Keyword / body-contains | Free+ (in HTTP probe) | Yes |
| Heartbeat / cron probe | Starter+ | Yes |
| SSL certificate expiry | Free+ | Yes |
| DNS record probe | Starter+ (incl. assertion) | Yes |
| Domain expiry (WHOIS/RDAP) | Starter+ | Yes |
| gRPC Health probes | Pro+ (Check + Watch, mTLS) | No |
| WebSocket probes | Pro+ (HTTP/1.1 + HTTP/2) | No |
| Database (Postgres / MySQL / SQL Server / Redis) | Business (custom probe queries) | No |
| SMTP/IMAP round-trip | Pro+ (3 modes) | No |
| Anomaly forecast (ML) | Business | No |
| Multi-region probe locations | Business — EU + US + APAC + SA, quorum rules | Yes (most paid tiers) |
| Status page | ||
| Public status page | Yes (Free+) | Yes (Free+) |
| Custom domain + auto HTTPS | Pro+ included | Team+ included |
| Custom branding (logo, colours, font) | Pro+ included | Team+ included |
| Subscribers (Email, Slack, Teams, SMS, Webhook) | All five channels; public sign-up + double opt-in | Email / Slack / Webhook |
| RSS / Atom / iCal feeds | Yes | Yes |
| Status badge (SVG + shields.io JSON) | Free+ | Yes |
| Embeddable widget + oEmbed | Free+ (zero-asset iframe) | Iframe embed, no oEmbed |
| Component groups | Free+ (flat groups, SortOrder) | Yes |
| Incidents | ||
| Auto-incident from probe transitions | Yes | Yes |
| Manual updates / post-mortems | Yes | Yes |
| AI-drafted incident summaries | Pro+ | Not yet |
| Scheduled maintenance windows | Yes | Yes |
| Incident metrics dashboard (MTTR, time-to-first-update) | Free+ (30/90/365-day windows) | Insights dashboard |
| Incident CSV export (metadata + components + timeline + SLO) | Starter+ (RFC 4180-escaped) | Generic data export |
| On-call & alerting | ||
| Slack / Teams alerts | Yes | Yes |
| Generic webhook (HMAC-signed + retry) | Pro+ | Yes |
| Custom request headers per webhook | Pro+ (PagerDuty / Opsgenie ready) | Yes |
| SMS alerts | Pay-per-use (low rate) | Credit packs |
| Phone call alerts | No | Yes |
| On-call rotation builder | Pro+ (weekly rotation + escalation policies; voice calls Phase 2) | Yes (full rotation editor + voice) |
| Multi-step escalation chain (paging chain) | Watcher fan-out (no chain) | Yes (multi-step) |
| Custom Reply-To on alert emails | Business (route Reply to support@your-co) | No (per-page header) |
| Reports & analytics | ||
| PDF reports (uptime / SLA) | Yes (4 cadences, 14 sections) | Limited |
| AI executive summary | Business | No |
| Scheduled report delivery | Yes | Limited |
| SLO / error-budget impact per incident | Pro+ | No (incident-side) |
| Anomaly-driven incident proposals | Business | No |
| Internal-only incidents | Free+ | No |
| Severity escalation (auto-page on stale incident) | Pro+ | Via Uptime product |
| Public trust score panel (MTTR / postmortem rate) | Free+ | No |
| Compliance & hosting | ||
| EU hosting option | Yes (per tenant) | EU PoPs available |
| GDPR-friendly DPA | Yes | Yes |
| SOC 2 report | In progress | SOC 2 Type II |
| Single sign-on (SAML) | Phase B (planned) | Yes (Enterprise) |
| Audit log of admin actions | Yes (90-day retention) | Yes |
| Beyond monitoring | ||
| Log management | No | Yes (separate product) |
| Synthetic browser checks | No (planned) | Yes |
| Developer / API & compliance | ||
| Public read API (status / incidents / probes) | Free+ | Yes |
| Audit log API export (cursor-paginated) | Business | Yes (Team+) |
| SSO domain lock (Microsoft + Google work accounts) | Business | Yes (Business) |
| White-label (hide "Powered by" + custom footer) | Business | Business |
Which one is right for you?
Pick Better Stack if…
- You need a serious on-call rotation builder with multi-step escalation, phone calls, and a follow-the-sun rotation calendar. Better Stack's on-call story is more mature today.
- You also need log management in the same bundle. Better Stack Logs is a real product; StatusPulse doesn't ship logs.
- Synthetic browser checks matter — recording a user flow and replaying it on schedule. Better Stack has this; StatusPulse doesn't (yet).
- SOC 2 Type II is non-negotiable today and SAML SSO is required at procurement.
Pick StatusPulse if…
- You need protocol-level probes for gRPC services, databases (Postgres / MySQL / SQL Server / Redis), WebSocket sessions, or SMTP/IMAP delivery round-trips. Better Stack doesn't have these as first-class types.
- You want to cut the monitoring bill in half without losing the polished status page + custom branding + AI incident updates. Pro at $19 vs Team at $60-90 covers the same ground for most teams.
- You want AI summaries baked in — both for live incidents and for executive sections of PDF reports.
- Per-tenant region pinning matters for your DPA — being able to say "this tenant lives in EU North, period" with no cross-region replication.
- You like a focused tool. StatusPulse does monitoring + status pages + incidents + reports, deeply. It doesn't try to be your log platform.
Switching from Better Stack
Most teams run both for 1-2 weeks before cutting over:
- Sign up for the free plan. Recreate your 5 most important monitors. Keep Better Stack untouched.
- Upgrade the probes that Better Stack couldn't reach. Swap your HTTP-checks-against-Postgres into a real Database probe. Swap your TCP-port-against-gRPC into a real gRPC Health probe.
- Wire alerts into the same Slack channel Better Stack uses. For 1-2 weeks you'll get duplicate alerts — confirms StatusPulse catches what Better Stack catches, and (usually) a few things it doesn't.
- Publish a parallel status page on a sub-domain, show it to key customers for feedback.
- Flip the public DNS when confident. Cancel the Better Stack renewal. Most teams pocket $30-60/mo immediately.
Try StatusPulse free
5 probes, 1 status page, forever. No credit card. US or EU host — you choose.