Checkly alternative: uptime and heartbeats with the logs behind them

The pitch

Checkly runs API checks and real-browser checks from cloud locations and tells you when one fails. It is a strong product, built for teams that test like engineers, and it has been at it since 2018. This post is for the team whose next question after "down" is "why": UpControl puts uptime checks, heartbeats, application logs and product events on one incident page, and a coding agent does the wiring with one npx command.

Where UpControl is better

• The "why", not just "down". Checkly tells you the checkout flow failed. UpControl correlates checks with application logs and product events, so the incident page carries the log lines around the failure and the deploy that went out before it. The alert names the check that failed; the page explains the failure.
• Your coding agent does the wiring. Run npx upcontrol and the coding agent you already use (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Gemini CLI, Copilot, Windsurf, Amp, Aider, Cline or opencode) wires up logging and events. Ask it to watch the checkout flow and log its runs, and the check plus the log line arrive together. No tracking code written by hand.
• A status page from the first minute, free. Type a domain on the landing page and a public status page for that host exists, with components, incidents and uptime history. The owner claims it with one click. Checkly monitors; the page your customers read is a separate purchase somewhere else.
• Heartbeats and uptime in one budget. HTTP checks from 1-minute intervals, SSL and domain expiry, and heartbeats for cron jobs and background workers are all first-class. One product watches the API the worker calls and the worker itself, and both land in the same timeline.
• Self-host the same product. The full core is AGPL-3.0, runs from one compose file on a GB-class box, and the OSS build sends no telemetry home. The hosted service is the same code and the same CLI.

Where Checkly is better

• Real browser checks. Browser checks are Playwright scripts that click through login, cart and checkout and fail on the first broken step. UpControl checks URLs, keywords and heartbeats; it does not run click-through scenarios. If a Playwright suite is what you want monitored, that gap decides this comparison.
• Monitoring as code. A Terraform provider, a CLI and checks that live in Git, get reviewed in pull requests and run from CI on every deploy. Our checks are API-driven and agent-driven; the Git-native workflow Checkly built over years is ahead of what we offer there.
• Deep API assertions. Assertions on JSON bodies with jq, on headers and on response times, per region. Our HTTP checks assert status codes and keywords.
• Pick your regions. Checks run from public cloud locations you choose. We do not advertise checks from many named cities; the fleet checks from its regions and stores the dns, tcp, tls and wait phases per check.

Be honest about which list matters for the flows that pay your bills.

Switching from Checkly in five minutes

1. Open upcontrol.io and type your domain. The public status page exists from that moment.
2. Claim the page from its link to move it into your account.
3. Add HTTP checks for the endpoints your Playwright suite already covers at the URL level, and a heartbeat for each background worker: a private URL the worker pings, where a miss opens an incident.
4. Pick Telegram or email alerts.
5. Optional, for the "why": run npx upcontrol in your repo and tell your agent what to log and which events to track.