Tissue Mast vs Healthchecks.io
Healthchecks.io is the cron-job monitor most people in this category have already used, and it is priced the same way we are: for the account, not per person. The honest comparison is depth, not price, and at twenty jobs they win.
Healthchecks.io gives away 20 jobs with 100 log entries each. Business is $20 a month, or $192 a year, for 100 jobs with 1,000 log entries, 50 SMS or WhatsApp credits and 20 phone-call credits. Nothing on the page is priced per user.
Tissue Mast Solo is $19 a month for 250 vitals, 100 probes checked every 30 seconds, three status pages, and a pager that rings through Do Not Disturb until acknowledged. The free account is ten vitals and ten probes, which is smaller than their free 20. If you have twenty jobs and no site to watch, Healthchecks is cheaper, and that is the end of the price argument.
What each one is
Two sentences each, before any numbers.
- Healthchecks.io
- A cron-job monitor. Each job gets a URL to ping when it finishes; if a ping does not arrive in time, you are alerted by email, chat, SMS, a phone call or a push service you connect. It understands cron expressions and time zones. Open source, with a hosted service.
- Tissue Mast
- An uptime monitor with a pager attached. Vitals do what Healthchecks does, with the crontab line and the IANA zone; probes fetch your URLs from eight locations; and a page rings the Mast Pager app on iPhone through silent mode and Do Not Disturb until someone acknowledges it.
Side by side
Every figure below came off the other company’s own pages, on one day, and is dated underneath.
| Healthchecks.io | Tissue Mast | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | 20 jobs, 100 log entries per job. | 10 vitals, 10 probes, 10 channels, 7 days of history. |
| Entry paid plan | Business, $20 a month or $192 a year: 100 jobs, 1,000 log entries per job. | Solo, $19 a month or $190 a year: 250 vitals, 100 probes, 100 channels, 30 days of history. |
| The plan above it | Business Plus, $80 a month or $768 a year: 1,000 jobs. | Team, $79 a month: 500 vitals, 250 probes, up to ten people, 90 days. |
| Price per person | None. | None. |
| Cron semantics | A cron expression and a time zone, with a grace period. | A crontab line and an IANA zone, with a grace period and a maximum duration. |
| Watching a website | No. Jobs ping Healthchecks; it does not fetch your site. | Probes fetch a URL or a port from eight locations and page only when more than half fail on two networks, twice. |
| Reaching a phone | Email, chat, SMS and call credits, and a push service you connect. | Mast Pager, our app, rings through silent mode and Do Not Disturb and repeats until acknowledged. |
| SMS and voice | 50 SMS or WhatsApp and 20 calls a month on Business. | No. |
| Open source | Yes. | No. |
Checked 2 October 2026 against Healthchecks.io’s pricing page. Both of us move; if a figure here has gone stale, tell us and we will correct it.
Where Healthchecks.io is the better choice
Twenty jobs and nothing else. Their free plan holds 20; ours holds 5. If cron jobs are the whole problem and you reach your phone some other way, use Healthchecks and pay nothing.
Self-hosting. Healthchecks is open source and runs anywhere Python does. Tissue Mast is a hosted service and nothing else.
SMS, WhatsApp and a phone call. Business includes credits for all three. We reach you through the app and a second phone.
A longer log on the free plan. Their Hobbyist tier keeps 100 entries per job; our free account keeps seven days.
Where Tissue Mast is the better choice
The thing that notices and the thing that rings are one product. A missed check-in rings a phone in Do Not Disturb, with the job’s name and how late it is on the lock screen, with no second service in between.
The front door and the back room. Vitals tell you the backup ran; probes tell you the site is up, from eight locations, with a vote before anybody is woken. Healthchecks does the first.
More jobs per dollar once you pay. Solo is $19 for 250 vitals against $20 for 100 jobs, and three status pages are included.
What moving looks like
The ping line changes its hostname. The schedule you give Mast is the same crontab line.
# before 0 3 * * * backup.sh && curl -fsS https://hc-ping.com/<uuid> # after 0 3 * * * backup.sh && curl -fsS https://mast.tissue.dev/mk_5d20b3e7f1
Add /fail on the error path or put the exit code in the URL, and the page says why. The manual has the start and finish variants.
Solo is $19 a month and the free account takes an email address. If you have more than ten jobs and no site to watch, stay on Healthchecks until you do.