Comparison
MainWP runs on your own WordPress install, costs nothing per site, and its Advanced Uptime Monitor is free. It also requires an API key from UptimeRobot, Better Uptime, NodePing or Site24x7, because MainWP has no probes of its own.
Researched and verified on 2026-08-15. We recheck competitor pricing quarterly.
You want the checks to come from somewhere other than your own infrastructure, and from one vendor rather than two. Five probes in Wroclaw, Berlin, Worcester, Newark and Milan, a status page for the client, Playwright checkout tests, visual regression and RUM, with the invoice in PLN and alerts by SMS through a Polish provider.
You want no per site fee and full ownership of the data. The plugin is free for unlimited sites, MainWP Pro is 199 USD a year or 499 USD once for life, and everything lives on your own hosting. For a large WordPress portfolio and a team comfortable running its own panel, the economics are hard to argue with.
| Feature | PingView | MainWP |
|---|---|---|
| ModelMainWP installs as a plugin on a WordPress site you own and run. | SaaS | Self-hosted |
| Per site feeMainWP does not charge per site, which wins on a large portfolio. | plan with a monitor limit | none |
| Who performs the uptime checkMainWP Advanced Uptime Monitor requires an API key from UptimeRobot, Better Uptime, NodePing or Site24x7 (checked 2026-08-15). The quality of the check is whatever that account provides. | 5 own probes | external API key |
| Check intervalMainWP states checks every 5 minutes with a re-check within 3 minutes, though the real interval follows the connected service. PingView needs Professional for 1 minute. | 1 min | 5 min |
| Survives your own infrastructure failingPingView probes sit outside any customer infrastructure. A self-hosted panel shares the fate of the hosting it runs on, which is a property of the architecture rather than a defect. | Available | Partially available |
| Targets that are not WordPressThe MainWP dashboard manages WordPress sites. | Available | Not available |
| Public status page for clientsNot found in MainWP public materials (checked 2026-08-15). | Available | Not available |
| Browser tests of the checkoutPlaywright scenarios from Professional. | Available | Not available |
| Visual regression testingNot found in MainWP public materials. | Available | Not available |
| Real User MonitoringNot found in MainWP public materials. | Available | Not available |
| SSL certificate monitoringBoth cover certificate expiry. TLS configuration analysis and security headers were found only at PingView. | Available | Available |
| Alert channelsPingView sends SMS through SerwerSMS.pl, a Polish provider. MainWP documents configurable email notifications per site. | email, SMS, Slack, Discord, Teams, webhook | |
| Backups, updates, cloningThe core of the MainWP product. PingView has no maintenance features. | Not available | Available |
| Data ownershipMainWP keeps everything on infrastructure you control. PingView is a hosted service. | Not available | Available |
| Polish interface and PLN invoicingMainWP communicates and prices in USD only (checked 2026-08-15). | Available | Not available |
Competitor data collected on 2026-08-15 from public pricing and documentation pages. Vendors change plans without notice, so verify current terms before you decide.
The MainWP Advanced Uptime Monitor requires an API key from UptimeRobot, Better Uptime, NodePing or Site24x7. MainWP never claims otherwise, but it does mean the monitoring is as good as that other account and you maintain two vendors. PingView checks from five of its own locations.
MainWP lives on a WordPress install you operate. If that hosting fails, so does the panel meant to tell you something failed. Our probes are outside every customer environment by design.
A self-hosted dashboard needs updating, backing up and securing. That work does not disappear, it just moves onto your plate.
A status page on your own domain with white label, a weekly PDF report, Playwright checkout tests, visual regression and RUM. None of these were found in MainWP public materials.
Polish interface, prices in PLN, invoice from a Polish entity, SMS through a Polish provider.
On price and control this is not close, and saying otherwise would be dishonest.
199 USD a year for unlimited sites, or 499 USD once for a lifetime licence. At a hundred sites there is no plan of ours that competes: our Enterprise tier is 999 PLN a month.
For a client who requires that maintenance data never leaves their infrastructure, a self-hosted panel is the answer and a hosted service is not.
The core of their product, absent from ours.
The extension is free, and with a free UptimeRobot account behind it the monitoring line on the invoice is zero.
Pay once, own it. Our subscription loses that argument with anyone counting five years ahead.
MainWP is an excellent management panel that displays monitoring performed by somebody else, from a dashboard hosted on the same kind of infrastructure it is watching. PingView performs the checks itself, from five locations outside your environment, and turns them into something you can show a client. If per site cost and data ownership decide, take MainWP. If the answer to "was it really down, and from where" decides, take this.
Choose the perfect plan for your monitoring needs.
Protect your revenue for the price of a pizza.
Starter
$24.99/mo
25 monitors
~1.00 $/monitor
Professional
$74.99/mo
100 monitors
~0.75 $/monitor
Enterprise
Custom pricing
Custom limits
Everything you need:
Cancel anytime. No contracts. No surprises.
The Advanced Uptime Monitor extension is free, and it requires an API key from UptimeRobot, Better Uptime, NodePing or Site24x7 (checked 2026-08-15). The checks are performed by that service, not by MainWP.
A self-hosted panel running on that server goes down with it. PingView probes run in Wroclaw, Berlin, Worcester, Newark and Milan, outside any customer infrastructure.
On a large portfolio, clearly. 199 USD a year covers unlimited sites, and there is a 499 USD lifetime licence. Add the cost of the hosting for the panel and the time to maintain it, then compare.
Yes, and it is a common shape: MainWP for updates, backups and cloning, PingView for the checks, the status page and the client report. The PingView WordPress plugin creates the monitor from the site admin.
No. Monitors work from a URL alone. The plugin exists to make onboarding one click from the WordPress admin and to show status, incidents and uptime there.
Every claim about MainWP comes from their public pricing page, documentation and help centre, collected on 2026-08-15 and linked below. Every claim about PingView is checked against our own source code rather than our marketing copy, which is why some rows show limits our own landing pages used to overstate. Where a fact could not be confirmed from a primary source, we leave it out instead of guessing.
Disclosure: PingView publishes this page and PingView is one of the two products compared. We have an obvious interest in the outcome, so we list where the other tool is the better choice and link their pricing page so you can check the numbers yourself.
Check MainWP pricing yourselfTen monitors, a status page and the WordPress plugin on the free plan.