Compare Monitoring Tools
Sentinel vs Oh Dear Every Check, Verified From Four Regions
Oh Dear is a well-built monitoring suite from a two-person team, with a deep feature list and strong roots in the Laravel community. The biggest difference is how each service decides your site is down: Oh Dear watches each site from one primary location and asks a second to confirm, while Sentinel runs every check from four regions at once and alerts only on agreement. Pricing differs just as much, per site there and flat plans here. An honest comparison follows.
Feature-by-Feature Breakdown
How Sentinel compares to Oh Dear
| Feature | Sentinel | Oh Dear |
|---|---|---|
| Locations Verifying Each Check | All 4 regions, simultaneously | 1 primary location, a 2nd confirms failures |
| Pricing Model | Flat plan tiers, $14 to $59/mo | Per site: $17/mo for 2 sites up to $439/mo for 200 |
| Cost at 50 Sites | Pro at $29/mo (100 monitors) | Agency tier at $165/mo |
| Free Tier | 10 monitors free forever, commercial use OK | None (10-day trial) |
| Check Interval | 30s Business / 1 min Starter & Pro / 5 min Free | Every minute on all plans |
| Broken Links & Mixed Content | Not available | Included |
| Performance Audits | Lighthouse audits (Pro+, Beta) | Daily Lighthouse reports |
| Heartbeat & Cron | Paid plans (Starter+) | Included |
| DNS & Domain Monitoring | DNS records + domain expiry (Starter+) | DNS records + domain expiry included |
| Status Pages | 1 on Free, 5 on Starter, 10 on Pro, unlimited on Business | Included, with subscriber notifications |
| Client Uptime Reports | Automated PDF reports on Business ($59/mo) | Monthly report emails |
| Deploy Tracking | GitHub deploy markers + deploy-window pauses | Maintenance windows |
| AI Access (MCP) | MCP server (Bearer + OAuth), 21 tools | MCP server |
| Team Seats | 5 members on Pro, no per-seat fee | Unlimited users on all plans |
| macOS Menu Bar App | Native menu bar app on Starter+ | Raycast extension |
Why People Switch
Verification and pricing, side by side
Four Regions Watch Every Check
Oh Dear assigns each site one primary check location from its list, with a second location confirming failures. Sentinel runs every single check from Ashburn, Portland, Nuremberg and Singapore at the same time, and only opens an incident when at least three of the four agree that your site is down while none of them can still reach it. A routing problem near one data center can't page you, and a real outage can't hide.
Pricing That Ignores Your Site Count
Oh Dear charges per site, which is fair at two sites and painful at fifty. Monitoring 50 sites there costs $165/mo on the Agency tier; the same portfolio fits Sentinel's Pro plan at $29/mo with room for 50 more. Grow to 150 sites and the gap widens to $365/mo versus $59/mo on Business. If you manage a portfolio, the pricing model matters more than any single feature.
Free to Start, Free to Compare
Oh Dear has no free tier; after the 10-day trial the meter starts at $17/mo. Sentinel's free plan is 10 monitors, forever, with no credit card and no restriction on commercial use. The practical upshot: you can point both tools at the same sites during an Oh Dear trial, watch which one alerts faster and more accurately, and decide with real data instead of feature grids.
FAQ
Sentinel vs Oh Dear questions
Doesn't Oh Dear check from 20+ locations?
It can check from 20+ cities, but each monitor uses one of them at a time. Per Oh Dear's own documentation, you pick a primary location per monitor, the minute-by-minute checks run from there, and a second location verifies failures before an alert. Sentinel runs every check from all four of its regions simultaneously and alerts only when at least three agree, so the question to ask any monitoring service is how many locations verify each check, and not how many are on the map.
When is Oh Dear the better choice?
If you monitor a handful of sites and want broken-link crawling, mixed-content detection and daily Lighthouse reports bundled per site, Oh Dear's everything-included model is genuinely good, and its Laravel ecosystem integrations run deep. The trade-offs are per-site pricing that climbs with your portfolio and single-primary-location checking. Sentinel is the stronger fit when alert accuracy and cost at scale matter most.
How does pricing compare as a portfolio grows?
Oh Dear charges by site count: $55/mo at 10 sites, $109/mo at 25, $165/mo at 50, $365/mo at 150. Sentinel charges by plan: Pro covers 100 monitors at $29/mo and Business covers 300 at $59/mo with 30-second checks and automated PDF client reports. Past roughly ten sites, the per-site model costs several times more.
Can I run Sentinel alongside Oh Dear before deciding?
Yes. Sentinel's free plan needs no credit card, so you can monitor the same sites with both during an Oh Dear trial and compare alert speed, accuracy and workflow with your own traffic before committing either way.
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Start monitoring with Sentinel
If you want every check verified from four regions and pricing that stays flat as your site list grows, give Sentinel a try. 10 monitors free forever, no credit card required.