Make the switch to Checkly
A quick guide to help you evaluate Checkly against the hundreds of other monitoring solutions in the market.
What monitoring solution are you currently using?
Select a monitoring tool above to see a customized migration guide.
What is Checkly?
Checkly helps thousands of software teams improve their application reliability with a platform built for engineers to take control of their testing, monitoring, and incident management.
Create and reuse tests using Playwright or OpenAPI, run them locally or in CI/CD, then deploy them to our global infrastructure to monitor your applications and services at high-frequency 24/7.
If anything fails or degrades, you and your teams will be alerted instantly and your status page updated.
Why teams switch to Checkly
Traditional monitoring tools create three critical problems that hold engineering teams back:
1. Not built for AI and the modern development workflow
Traditional monitoring tools were designed for a different era of software development. They use clunky UIs, require manual configuration of hundreds of monitors, and don't integrate with your code or CI/CD pipelines. AI is tacked on as widgets and not built for an actual workflow.
2. Expensive and complex to scale
As your team and infrastructure grow, so to will your monitoring and observability bill. On top of your billing, manually managing hundreds of monitors becomes unsustainable and expensive. Legacy tools make it painful to replicate, version, and manage monitoring at scale.
3. Too many false positives and not enough signal
When monitoring tools are disconnected from everyday work and siloed in operations, development teams don't use them. Developers ignore alerts that they don't understand, monitors fall out of sync with code, and reliability becomes an afterthought instead of a safeguard.
Benefits of Checkly
How Checkly improves reliability
1. Built for a clear signal of actual user experience
Most monitoring tools grew up around infrastructure dashboards or generic uptime validation. Checkly is built around applications, thinking in terms of APIs, UIs, and critical user journeys.
- •Validate flows like sign-up, checkout, SSO, or critical APIs from multiple regions.
- •Treat your monitoring setup as a first-class part of the application, not an afterthought.
Result: You get coverage that matches how users actually experience your app — not just whether an endpoint returns 200.
2. Optimized for developer experience and Monitoring as Code
Checkly leans into the tools and workflows your developers already use: JS/TS, Playwright, Terraform CI/CD, Github, and more. It is designed to be configured and deployed as code, directly in your current development workflow.
- •Checkly CLI: define checks, alert policies, and environments as code.
- •Playwright Check Suites: reuse your existing Playwright tests as production monitors.
- •Terraform & Pulumi providers: manage monitors like you manage infra.
3. Scales with your systems and your org
As companies grow, DIY scripts and UI-driven configs start to fall over. Checkly is built to scale from a single product team to large, multi-service organizations:
- •Global public locations + private locations for internal services.
- •Environments, projects, and code-based configuration for multi-team setups.
- •Enterprise plans with SLAs, SSO/SAML, long retention, and dedicated support when you're ready.
Result: You can keep your monitoring model clean and maintainable even as you add more services, regions, and teams.
4. One workflow to Detect, Communicate, and Resolve
Checkly stitches together what most stacks treat as separate tools:
- •Detect issues proactively with high-frequency uptime checks and Playwright-based synthetics.
- •Communicate clearly with status pages and rich, routed alerts (Slack, SMS, webhooks, Opsgenie, etc.).
- •Resolve faster using Checkly Traces and deep error context so engineers know exactly what went wrong.
Instead of jumping between 3–5 tools, teams stay in one monitoring workflow from detection through to resolution.
How to make the move
The migration process
Here's a proven five-step process for successfully migrating to Checkly:
Create your Checkly account
Start with the free tier or a trial on a paid plan. Optionally install the Checkly CLI in a demo project to see Monitoring as Code in action.
Instrument your “golden paths”
Add a handful of critical uptime checks (core URLs, login, APIs). Build 2–5 Playwright checks for your most important browser flows (signup, checkout, SSO, key dashboards).
Run a pilot alongside your current tool
Run Checkly in parallel for 4–6 weeks. Compare signal quality, time-to-detect, developer adoption, and cost.
Codify your monitoring model
Move monitors and alert policies into code (Checkly CLI, Terraform, or Pulumi). Standardize naming, labels, alert rules, and environments across teams.
Switch fully and decommission legacy monitors
Migrate remaining checks and status communication into Checkly. Turn off overlapping monitors in your previous tools to avoid double-paging and double-billing.
Pitching Checkly
Need to pitch Checkly to your bosses?
Here are the key points to help you get stakeholder buy-in:
"We're going to save a boatload of money"
Teams typically save 30-50% on monitoring costs with Checkly's transparent, usage-based pricing.
"We'll catch and fix issues faster than our customers can report them"
Catch issues 2x faster with intelligent alerting and detailed error diagnostics. Multi-step checks catch complex failures that simple uptime monitors miss.
"We can actually monitor the things that earn us money"
Built on modern technologies and designed for modern workflows. Regular updates, active development, and a roadmap aligned with how teams actually work.
"Our developers can share and reuse tests and monitors"
Monitoring as Code means developers spend less time clicking through UIs and more time writing code. Deploy monitors as part of your release process, not as an afterthought.
Need an answer?
Frequently asked questions
Checkly offers flexible, transparent pricing with self-serve plans for smaller teams and custom enterprise contracts for larger organizations. Plans scale by uptime monitors and synthetic check volume, with discounts for annual commitments.
Yes. Checkly provides enterprise features like SSO/SAML, SOC certifications, and is available via the AWS Marketplace with defined SLAs and long data retention on higher tiers.
Yes. Checkly's Private Locations let you run checks against internal services and non-public endpoints from within your own infrastructure.
Checkly integrates with CI/CD, Slack, incident management tools, and IaC tools like Terraform and Pulumi. You can trigger checks in pipelines, route alerts into existing channels, and manage monitors alongside your infrastructure code.
Most teams start by running Checkly in parallel for critical flows. You can prove value and build momentum internally while your existing contract runs down, then switch fully once you're ready. (If you're going through AWS Marketplace, you can often align Checkly contracts with broader AWS commitments.)
Helpful resources
Ready to make the switch?
Our team will guide you through every step of the migration process.
