Most agencies do not leave UptimeRobot because it stopped working. They leave because a client asked for something it was never built for: a status page on the client’s own domain without the vendor’s logo, a login where the client sees only their sites, or a one-page report with the agency’s name on it. Until then the free plan with 50 monitors does the job, and it is a good deal.
This guide is for the moment you start asking “what else is there”. It is deliberately a decision guide rather than a feature list. We make Tenium, so we also tell you when you should not move.
What you are actually switching from
UptimeRobot’s published plans, as we last read them (prices in euro, as UptimeRobot shows them to EUR countries):
- Free: 50 monitors, 5-minute checks for HTTP, keyword, ping and port, one status page, no login seats.
- Solo: €10 a month for 10 monitors or €22 for 50, 60-second checks, 3 status pages on your own domain, no white-label, no login seats.
- Team: from €41 (about $44) for 100 monitors, 30-second checks, white-label status pages, 3 login seats.
- Scale: from €77 (about $83) for 200 or 500 monitors, 15-second checks, 5 login seats.
What none of these include is a place for a client to log in and see only their own monitors, or an automatic monthly report under your brand. Login seats are for your own team. You can work around that with one status page per client, but the report is then something you assemble by hand.
Five questions that decide it
Write the answers down before you open a single pricing page.
- How many monitors do you really need? Count five per client site: home page, a keyword check on the page that earns money, the login page, SSL expiry and domain expiry. Add a heartbeat for each scheduled job. Forty sites is 200 monitors, one hundred sites is 500.
- Does the client see anything? A status page, a login, a monthly report, or nothing at all? “Nothing” is a legitimate answer for many care plans, and it keeps the decision simple.
- Who gets woken up? One person needs one seat. A team of four with an out-of-hours rota needs seats, escalation to a second contact and acknowledgement so two people do not chase the same incident.
- How fast must you know? A five-minute check can lose you five minutes of downtime before anyone looks. For shops and booking sites most agencies want 60 or 30 seconds.
- Which alert channel do you actually read? If the honest answer is “SMS and phone call”, that narrows the field more than any price does. Tenium sends email, Telegram, Slack, Discord, Teams, Google Chat, Mattermost and signed webhooks. It does not send SMS or call you.
What it costs at 10, 40 and 100 client sites
At five monitors per site, these are the Tenium plans that fit and the UptimeRobot plan closest to each. Tenium prices come from our plan table; UptimeRobot’s are the published “from” prices, so check their page before you decide.
| Client sites | Monitors | Tenium | UptimeRobot |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | 50 | Free ($0, 5-minute checks) or Starter $7 (100 monitors, 1 min checks) | Free (€0, 5-minute checks) or Solo €22 (60 s) |
| 40 | 200 | Pro $29 (300 monitors, 30 s checks, 5 seats, white-label) | Scale from €77 (200 monitors, 15 s, 5 seats) |
| 100 | 500 | Agency $59 (1000 monitors, client workspaces, a report per client) | Scale with 500 monitors; the price is on their pricing page |
Two things the table cannot show. First, at 40 sites the price gap is real (Pro is about 65% below Scale on list prices, converting at about €1 = $1.08), but UptimeRobot Scale checks every 15 seconds and Pro every 30 s. If you truly need 15, that is the answer. Second, at 100 sites the Agency plan is not mainly a price decision: it is the plan with client workspaces and per-client reports, and that is what you are paying for.
Where the other tools fit
Be sceptical of any round-up, including ours, that crowns a single winner. A fair split:
- Better Stack if you run your own product with an on-call rota: schedules, phone escalation, logs and browser checks in one place. It prices per monitor block and per responder, so it gets expensive for agency use.
- Uptime Kuma if every site is yours, you already run a server and you are happy to patch it. Free software, one location, you are the on-call for the monitor itself.
- Hyperping or Oh Dear if the status page or the broken-link crawl is the part you care about most.
- Cronitor if scheduled jobs are the main worry.
- Tenium if you look after other people’s sites and want the client-facing parts (workspaces, reports, white-label pages) at a flat price.
The full comparison with prices is in the eight-tool round-up, and each tool has its own comparison page.
What you give up by moving to Tenium
Write this list into the decision, not after it:
- No native mobile app. Alerts reach your phone through Telegram or your email app.
- No SMS or voice-call alerts. If a client’s contract says “phone call within five minutes”, Tenium is the wrong tool.
- Fastest interval is 30 s, not 15 seconds.
- No SOC 2 report today. If a client’s procurement asks for one, ask UptimeRobot for theirs.
- Checks run from Amsterdam and London.
- Telegram alerts need a paid plan; the Free plan alerts by email, Discord and Google Chat.
A low-risk way to try it
- Create a read-only API key in UptimeRobot and import your monitors. The step-by-step import guide covers what comes across and what does not.
- Leave UptimeRobot running. Nothing in it is changed by the import.
- Add your alert contacts in Tenium; they are not copied, on purpose.
- Watch both for a week, including at least one real incident or a test outage on a staging site.
- Cancel the old account only when you have seen Tenium handle an alert the way you want.
Use the uptime calculator to turn the percentages in your client contracts into minutes before you promise anything, and see the website monitoring page for the checks you will recreate.
The short version
Stay on UptimeRobot if the free plan covers you, or you need SMS, a mobile app or 15-second checks. Move if clients need a login or a branded report, or you pay for Team or Scale mainly to get white-label pages and more monitors. Compare the paid tiers side by side on the Tenium vs UptimeRobot page, and start on the free plan, where 30 monitors cost nothing, to see whether the dashboard suits you.
Frequently asked questions
Is UptimeRobot still worth using for an agency?
Yes, in two cases: you monitor your own sites or fewer than 50 client monitors and the free plan with 5-minute checks is enough, or you need a native mobile app, SMS or voice alerts, or 15-second checks. Those are real strengths. The case for switching starts when clients need their own login or a branded monthly report.
How many monitors does an agency need per client site?
Plan on five: the home page, a keyword check for the page that matters (checkout or contact form), the login page, the SSL certificate and the domain expiry date. Add a cron heartbeat if the site runs scheduled jobs. Forty client sites is therefore about 200 monitors.
Can I run two tools in parallel while I decide?
Yes, and you should for at least a week. Import a copy of your monitors, keep the old account running and compare what each tool reports. Nothing in the old account is changed by an import.
What does Tenium not do that UptimeRobot does?
Tenium has no native mobile app, no SMS or voice-call alerts, and its fastest interval is 30 s where UptimeRobot Scale offers 15 seconds. Tenium also holds no SOC 2 report. Alerts go to email, Telegram (paid plans), Slack, Discord, Teams and webhooks.
Related
Related Tenium pages
Monitor your first site free
30 monitors free, checks from 2 regions, no card. SSL and domain expiry from $7 a month.