Oh Dear
What Is Oh Dear?
Oh Dear is a website monitoring platform aimed at developers, agencies, and small-to-mid-size businesses that need continuous visibility into uptime, SSL certificates, broken links, performance, and DNS changes. Starting at $17 per month for up to 10 sites, it positions itself as an all-in-one monitoring solution rather than a collection of separate tools. Plans scale up to enterprise tiers covering hundreds of sites, making it relevant for freelancers managing a handful of client projects as well as larger teams with complex infrastructure.
Core Features and What They Cover
- Uptime monitoring: Checks run every minute from multiple global locations. Alerts fire via email, Slack, SMS, PagerDuty, OpsGenie, and webhooks when a site goes down or returns an unexpected HTTP status code.
- SSL certificate tracking: Monitors expiry dates and alerts you a configurable number of days in advance, helping teams avoid outages caused by forgotten renewals.
- Broken link crawler: Scans every page on a domain to surface 404s and other HTTP errors, which is particularly useful for content-heavy sites and e-commerce stores.
- Performance monitoring: Tracks Google Lighthouse scores over time, giving a historical record of how page speed evolves after deployments or content changes.
- DNS monitoring: Detects unexpected changes to A, MX, CNAME, and other records, alerting teams to potential hijacking or misconfiguration.
- Scheduled task monitoring (Cron jobs): Sends alerts when recurring server tasks fail to run or run longer than expected, a feature that distinguishes Oh Dear from pure uptime tools.
- Status pages: Each plan includes hosted public or private status pages, removing the need for a separate service like Statuspage.io for many users.
Pricing, Usability, and Limitations
Oh Dear offers three published tiers: $17/month (10 sites), $34/month (25 sites), and $59/month (100 sites), with annual billing available at roughly a 20% discount. A 10-day free trial requires no credit card. The web interface is clean and developer-friendly, with a well-documented REST API and Laravel integration maintained by the same team behind the popular Spatie PHP packages. Teams familiar with Laravel will find native support particularly convenient.
On the limitations side, Oh Dear does not offer transaction monitoring or synthetic browser scripting, which puts it behind tools like Checkly or Datadog Synthetics for teams needing user-journey simulation. Check intervals are fixed at one minute on all plans, whereas some Oh Dear alternatives such as Uptime Robot offer 5-minute checks on a free tier or sub-minute intervals on paid plans. There is also no native mobile app; monitoring is managed exclusively through the web dashboard or API.
Who Should Consider Oh Dear
Oh Dear is a strong fit for web agencies and Laravel developers who want consolidated monitoring without stitching together five different services. The combination of uptime, SSL, broken links, DNS, cron monitoring, and status pages under a single subscription delivers clear cost efficiency compared to purchasing each capability separately. Teams evaluating the best SaaS tool software for multi-site visibility will find the per-site pricing transparent and predictable. However, teams requiring deep synthetic monitoring, sub-minute checks, or mobile-first dashboards should evaluate Checkly or Better Uptime before committing.
Ready to try Oh Dear?
Try Oh Dear for free and see for yourself.
Oh Dear vs. Alternatives
| Feature | Oh Dear | Better Uptime | UptimeRobot |
|---|---|---|---|
| Website Uptime Monitoring | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| SSL Certificate Monitoring | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Broken Links Checker | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| DNS Monitoring | ✓ | ✓ | ○ |
| Public Status Pages | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Cron Job Monitoring | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Performance Monitoring | ✓ | ○ | ✗ |
| On-Call Scheduling & Escalations | ○ | ✓ | ✗ |
✓ Supported ○ Limited ✗ Not supported
Why this tool?
Strengths
- Monitor Laravel applications with built-in PHP-specific insights
- Catch performance issues before they impact users
- Set smart alerts that learn your app's normal behavior
vs. Alternatives
- vs New Relic: Laravel-first focus with simpler setup
- vs Sentry: Performance monitoring + error tracking in one
- vs DataDog: Better for small-to-medium Laravel teams
Start free monitoring in 2 minutes
When NOT to use?
- You need real-time alerting for critical infrastructure. Oh Dear's monitoring has inherent delays and is better suited for general website health rather than mission-critical systems requiring sub-second incident detection.
- Your website receives extremely high traffic with complex API monitoring needs. Oh Dear is designed for standard web applications and may not scale efficiently for enterprise-grade monitoring of highly distributed systems with thousands of endpoints.
- You require deep custom metrics and business intelligence dashboards. Oh Dear focuses on uptime and performance basics, so if you need to track custom KPIs or integrate specialized analytics, you'll find its reporting limited compared to dedicated observability platforms.
- You're managing multiple independent systems across different cloud providers with unified logging. Oh Dear doesn't aggregate logs or provide centralized observability across fragmented infrastructure; it's better for monitoring single or closely-related properties.
- You need budget-friendly monitoring for a bootstrapped startup. Oh Dear's pricing starts at a premium level, making it less suitable for early-stage projects that need free or very low-cost monitoring solutions with basic uptime checks.
What users say
The posts are a mixed collection with only Posts 1, 3, and 5 being relevant product/service reviews. Post 1 about Atlas Ocean Voyages explicitly warns against the company despite some positives (score: 3), Post 3 about Wildfire Public House is a cautionary tale (score: 3), and Post 5 about HAL cruise is moderately positive (score: 6). Posts 2, 4, 6, 7, and 8 are unrelated fiction, webnovels, TV reviews, and off-topic content.
Praised for
- Small ship size (167 of 196 capacity) enabled daily landings and Zodiac cruises (Post 1)
- Antarctica scenery and experience was amazing despite operator issues (Post 1)
- HAL cruise offered good value and interesting itinerary for active travelers (Post 5)
Criticized for
- Atlas Ocean Voyages explicitly not recommended despite positive aspects; unclear crew/passenger ratio and unfinished review suggests significant issues (Post 1)
- Wildfire Public House disappointed despite excellent reviews and promises; restaurant industry veteran found fundamental problems (Post 3)
- HAL cruise review incomplete but noted as 'interesting' rather than enthusiastically positive (Post 5)
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is Oh Dear and how does it work?
- Oh Dear is a SaaS monitoring tool that helps track the uptime, performance, and health of your website and applications in real-time. It continuously checks your site's availability and alerts you immediately when issues are detected, allowing you to respond quickly before users experience problems.
- How much does Oh Dear cost?
- Oh Dear offers flexible pricing plans based on the number of monitors and features you need, with plans starting at an affordable entry level and scaling up for larger operations. You can visit their website or sign up for a free trial to see current pricing and find the plan that fits your budget.
- Can Oh Dear monitor multiple websites?
- Yes, Oh Dear allows you to monitor multiple websites and applications across different domains from a single dashboard. You can set up custom checks for each site and manage all your monitoring needs in one centralized location.
- Does Oh Dear send alerts when my site goes down?
- Yes, Oh Dear automatically sends real-time alerts via email, SMS, Slack, PagerDuty, and other integrations when your site experiences downtime or performance issues. You can customize alert rules and notification preferences to ensure you're notified exactly how and when you need to be.
- Is Oh Dear suitable for small businesses?
- Yes, Oh Dear is designed to work for businesses of all sizes, from small startups to large enterprises, with scalable plans and features. Its user-friendly interface and affordable pricing make it an accessible choice for small business owners who want reliable uptime monitoring without complexity.