An honest TrackSSL alternative
TrackSSL watches one way a website dies: the certificate expiring. Upcheck watches that the same way — thresholds, full chain detail, alerts where the team is — plus the other three: downtime, DNS changes, and the domain registration lapsing.
$10/month base · $1 per website · certificate, uptime, DNS, and domain
The certificate is one of four ways the same site goes down
TrackSSL does one job and prices by it: certificate-count tiers from 2 free certificates to 500 at $149 a month, with seats counted per tier and Microsoft Teams and webhook alerts reserved for the $39 Growth plan. If certificate expiry is truly the only thing you need watched, it is a focused tool at a fair price — and past about 20 certificates, a cheaper one than Upcheck.
The case for Upcheck is that certificate expiry rarely travels alone. The teams watching for it also own the uptime, the DNS records, and the domain registration of the same sites — and each of those takes the site down on its own schedule. Upcheck watches all four per website, for one dollar, with every alert channel included at every size.
TrackSSL vs Upcheck, feature by feature
TrackSSL details read from trackssl.com and its pricing page, September 2026. Their plans change — check theirs before deciding on numbers alone.
What the wider view buys
- 01
Expiry is not the only way a certificate page dies
The certificate can be perfectly valid while the site behind it is down, the DNS record points somewhere new, or the domain registration quietly lapses. Upcheck watches all four on the same dollar — the certificate is one column on the board, not the whole board.
- 02
No channel behind a paywall
Alerting into Microsoft Teams or your own tooling should not cost a tier upgrade. Every Upcheck workspace gets email, Slack, Discord, Teams, and a webhook carrying a structured JSON event your systems can route.
- 03
No seat arithmetic
TrackSSL counts seats per tier — 1 on Starter, 2 on Growth, 5 on Scale. Upcheck doesn't charge for people: invite the team, assign owner, admin, or member, and the bill stays the number of websites plus ten.
- 04
No cliff between tiers
Certificate 21 on TrackSSL means jumping from $19 to $39. Website 21 on Upcheck means the bill goes up by a dollar. Linear pricing has no cliffs to plan around.
Three reasons to stay with TrackSSL
- 01
You monitor certificates at volume, and only certificates
Past roughly 20 certificates, TrackSSL's per-cert pricing wins on the sticker: 80 certs cost $39 a month there and $90 here. The $90 buys uptime, DNS, and domain checks on all 80 sites — but if you genuinely will not use them, don't pay for them.
- 02
Your certificates are internal
TrackSSL's Growth tier monitors private and internal certificates. Upcheck probes from the public internet and cannot see a certificate on a host it cannot reach.
- 03
Two certs, zero budget
TrackSSL's free plan — 2 certificates, email and Slack alerts — is a real product at a real price of nothing. For a personal site, that may be the whole answer.
The certificate check itself is documented in full on the SSL certificate expiration monitoring page.
Frequently asked questions
Does Upcheck only monitor SSL certificates like TrackSSL?
No — that is the main difference. TrackSSL monitors SSL/TLS certificates and nothing else. Upcheck checks the certificate every 12 hours with the same expiry-threshold alerting, and also probes the website's uptime every 5 minutes, watches its DNS records every 6 hours, and checks the domain registration daily. One website, four checks, one dollar a month.
How does Upcheck's pricing compare to TrackSSL's?
TrackSSL prices by certificate count: free for 2, $19/month for 20, $39 for 80, up to $149 for 500 — with seats counted per tier. Upcheck is $10/month plus $1 per website. At 20 websites that is $30 against TrackSSL's $19; the $11 difference buys uptime, DNS, and domain monitoring on all 20 sites, plus Teams and webhook alerts that TrackSSL reserves for its $39 tier. At higher cert volumes TrackSSL's sticker is lower — this page's comparison table says so plainly.
Can Upcheck monitor internal or private certificates?
No. Upcheck checks certificates by connecting to the website from the public internet, the way a visitor's browser does, so a certificate on an internal host it cannot reach is invisible to it. TrackSSL's Growth tier and above monitor private certificates (in beta); if internal PKI is your requirement, that is the better fit.
What certificate details does Upcheck check?
Every 12 hours Upcheck reads the certificate's expiry date, issuer, subject alternative names, fingerprint, and chain. Warnings fire at the thresholds you set — commonly 30, 14, and 7 days out, and on the expiry day itself — and a rule can cover every website in the workspace or just the ones that matter. The full detail is on the SSL certificate expiration monitoring page.
Is there a free way to check a certificate with Upcheck?
Yes — the free SSL checker inspects any site's certificate without signup: expiry date, issuer, SANs, and chain. Checking once is free; the paid product is the watching — rechecking every 12 hours and telling a human before expiry becomes an outage. Upcheck has no free monitoring tier, while TrackSSL offers 2 certificates free; for two personal certs and no other checks, theirs is honestly the cheaper answer.
What does switching from TrackSSL to Upcheck involve?
Adding your websites — Upcheck finds the certificates itself by connecting to each site, so there is no certificate list to import and nothing to install. Then point alert rules at your channels: thresholds for expiry warnings, and uptime, DNS, and domain rules if you want the other three checks alerting too. A modest certificate portfolio is covered within the hour.
Watch the certificate. And everything else.
Add the websites you own, set your expiry thresholds, and let the checks run.