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SiteGuardian vs Betterstack. Uptime plus four checks Betterstack doesn’t run.
Betterstack watches uptime, ships monitoring for SSL on paid, and runs an incident timeline with on-call rotations. It does not crawl your site for broken links, does not watch your checkout, and does not test your forms. SiteGuardian ships uptime, SSL expiry, broken-link coverage, checkout-failure monitoring, and form-failure monitoring on every paid plan, in one inbox.
- One loud email when your site, checkout, or forms go down. No dashboard login.
- Permanent minutely probe cadence on the paid SiteGuardian plan.
- SSL expiry alerts on every paid SiteGuardian plan, included — not an add-on.
- Watches the URL list you configured and re-probes it for broken links, in the same email.
- Watches your checkout and your contact form — alerts in the same email when either breaks.
- No free tier on SiteGuardian. You pay for the watch, by the month.
- Custom slow threshold per URL, set in plain English.
- Built for one founder, one inbox, one storefront.
When Betterstack is the right fit
Betterstack is the right fit when you want an on-call rotation, an incident timeline, and a free status page alongside uptime, and you do not need the four SG-killer checks.
When SiteGuardian is the right fit
SiteGuardian is the right fit when you want one loud email that covers uptime, broken links on the URL list, checkout, forms, and SSL expiry — and you do not yet have the on-call rotation.
Feature-by-feature
Where each one differs, side by side.
The rows below are the axes a small shop should care about most when choosing a monitor. Anything outside this list is something most small shops do not use.
| Feature | SiteGuardian | Competitor |
|---|---|---|
| Probe cadence (paid) | Every minute | Every 30 seconds (paid) |
| Probe cadence (free tier) | Every 3 minutes | |
| Alert destination | One inbox | Email, SMS, Slack, MS Teams, webhooks |
| Public status page | ||
| Custom slow threshold per URL | Global only | |
| Maintenance windows | Pause via dashboard | Built-in scheduler |
| Free tier | 10 monitors, 10 heartbeats, 1 status page | |
| Pricing model (paid) | $19/mo Starter, $39/mo Pro, $299 once Lifetime | Free; paid responders $34/mo (or $29/mo yearly), +$25/mo per 50 monitors |
| AI-powered root cause | Not yet available | AI SRE token-priced, included on paid |
| SSL expiry alerts | On paid responders | |
| Broken-link coverage | Watches your configured URL list | |
| Checkout-failure monitoring | ||
| Form-failure monitoring |
Pricing, line by line
Betterstack’s real public pricing, next to SiteGuardian’s.
Each row is one tier the competitor publishes on their pricing page, plus SiteGuardian Starter / Pro / Lifetime. The verification trail below the table names the source URL and the date we re-checked it.
| Tier | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
SiteGuardianSiteGuardian Starter | $19/month | 1 site, 10 URLs, every-5-min probes |
SiteGuardianSiteGuardian Pro | $39/month | 3 sites, 50 URLs, every-1-min probes |
SiteGuardianSiteGuardian Lifetime | $299 once | 1 site, 50 URLs, every-5-min probes, all future updates included |
CompetitorBetterstack Free | $0/month | 10 monitors, 10 heartbeats, 1 status page, Slack + email alerts |
CompetitorBetterstack Responder (monthly) | $34/month | Uptime + Telemetry access, on-call scheduling, escalation chains |
CompetitorBetterstack Responder (yearly) | $29/month, billed annually | Yearly discount on the responder seat, same feature set as monthly |
CompetitorBetterstack +50 Monitors | $25/month | Adds 50 monitors and 50 heartbeats on top of the 10 included |
CompetitorBetterstack Additional Status Page | $15/month | Public status page beyond the first included with the seat |
Verification trail
- SiteGuardian — SiteGuardian Starter: https://siteguardian.app/pricingverified 2026-07-17
- SiteGuardian — SiteGuardian Pro: https://siteguardian.app/pricingverified 2026-07-17
- SiteGuardian — SiteGuardian Lifetime: https://siteguardian.app/pricingverified 2026-07-17
- Betterstack — Betterstack Free: https://betterstack.com/pricingverified 2026-07-31
- Betterstack — Betterstack Responder (monthly): https://betterstack.com/pricingverified 2026-07-31
- Betterstack — Betterstack Responder (yearly): https://betterstack.com/pricingverified 2026-07-31
- Betterstack — Betterstack +50 Monitors: https://betterstack.com/pricingverified 2026-07-31
- Betterstack — Betterstack Additional Status Page: https://betterstack.com/pricingverified 2026-07-31
Honest pros & cons
What each tool genuinely does well — and where it’s rough.
Betterstack
Pros
- Real free tier (10 monitors + 10 heartbeats + 1 status page as of July 2026).
- Public status page ships on the free tier, not behind a paid plan.
- 30-second probe cadence on paid responders.
- On-call rotation with timezone, escalation, overrides, and a phone-call alert route.
- AI SRE agent bundled with paid seats (token-priced), does root-cause analysis in Slack.
- Playwright-based transaction monitoring — weakest link is the per-minute cost and the script-maintenance burden.
- Incidents launch straight from chat (Slack / MS Teams) via /incident.
Rough edges
- Per-responder, per-monitor, per-status-page math; a small shop ends up at $34–80/mo once seats stack.
- Playwright checkout probes are billed per minute — costs climb on a real shop’s transaction volume.
- Broken-link coverage is not a feature; you wire it yourself or you accept 4xx silence.
- No dedicated form-path probe; the form path is whatever an HTTP-ping gets you.
SiteGuardian
Pros
- One inbox, one email per outage — broken-link, checkout, form, SSL, uptime all stack into the same loud email.
- Per-URL slow thresholds on every plan, set in plain English.
- No per-monitor, per-seat, or per-check math. Three flat tiers.
- Minutely probe cadence on Pro, paid from day one.
Rough edges
- No free tier; you pay for the watch from the first URL.
- No on-call rotation, incident timeline, or public status page in the boxed product.
- Slack routing is "email your already-on-Slack" rather than a native chat-based incident command.
Who it’s for
The two buyer profiles — and which one you are.
Betterstack is for
A team with at least three on-call engineers and a need for status page + timeline + rotation shipped in one place, who can tolerate writing Playwright scripts for the checkout probe.
SiteGuardian is for
A 1-person Shopify / WordPress / Squarespace shop that wants the four SG-killer checks on the same email and has no on-call rotation.
The verdict
SiteGuardian for the four checks; Betterstack for the rotation.
Pick SiteGuardian if
A one-founder Shopify / WordPress / Squarespace shop that wants uptime, broken-link coverage, checkout-failure monitoring, form-failure monitoring, and SSL expiry in one loud email and has no on-call rotation.
Pick Betterstack if
A team with at least three on-call engineers, a Slack-first incident workflow, and a need for status-page + timeline + escalation + AI SRE in one stack — and a willingness to script and pay per Playwright minute for the checkout probe.
Frequently asked
The buying-time questions, answered flat.
Frequently asked
Mega comparison
See every comparison we wrote.
Fourteen alternatives, side by side in one decision matrix.
Try it
If Betterstack feels heavier than you need. Try SiteGuardian.
Starter is $19 a month. One site, ten URLs, every-five-minute checks. Pro is $39 a month. Three sites, fifty URLs, every-minute checks. Lifetime is $299 paid once and stays yours with every future update included.
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