Jetpack Monitor is the uptime check most WordPress sites end up with because Jetpack is already installed for something else — stats, image CDN, related posts. BD Uptime Monitor is the alternative for operators who don’t want the whole Jetpack stack and the WordPress.com account attached to it.
That framing matters more than the feature comparison, because the two plugins are closer than either marketing page admits.
Where Jetpack Monitor still wins: the global check infrastructure runs from WordPress.com’s network, so a check failure means something is wrong on your origin and not on your monitor. BD Uptime Monitor pings your own site from your own server, which is fine for catching origin-down events but won’t detect DNS, CDN or routing issues between your visitors and your host. If you need true external monitoring, Jetpack Monitor has the architecture for it and we don’t.
Where BD wins: no WordPress.com account, no Jetpack dependency, no telemetry on which posts your visitors are reading. Incident log lives in your database. Email alerts go through your SMTP, not Automattic’s.
Verdict: Pick Jetpack Monitor if you want external uptime checks from a global network and you’re fine running Jetpack. Pick BD Uptime Monitor if you want self-hosted uptime checks with no third-party account or telemetry.
# BD Uptime Monitor vs Jetpack Monitor
Uptime monitoring has a fundamental architectural rule: the monitor should not be on the same machine as the thing it monitors. If your server goes down, anything running on it goes down too — including the script that’s supposed to email you about the outage. Jetpack Monitor follows this rule correctly: Automattic’s infrastructure pings your site every five minutes from outside, and emails you if the response fails. BD Uptime Monitor doesn’t follow this rule. It runs in WordPress, pings its own REST endpoint via WP-Cron, and logs incidents to a local database table.
We’re going to be honest about that gap before we sell you anything else. If your server is completely offline, BD Uptime Monitor can’t tell you. The cron job that fires the check can’t run if PHP can’t run, and the email that should fire when the check fails won’t send if the mail process can’t start. It’s a self-pinging monitor and it has the limitations a self-pinging monitor has.
So why does BD Uptime Monitor exist? Because not every operator wants a Jetpack/WordPress.com connection on their site, and not every operator wants their uptime data reported to Automattic. The plugin solves a slightly different problem: it logs detailed incident history into your own database, it exposes a REST health endpoint at `/wp-json/bdum/v1/health` that external tools can poll independently, and it bundles cleanly with the rest of the BD plugin set under one license dashboard. The intended pattern is BD Uptime Monitor for in-WordPress incident logging plus an external watchdog (UptimeRobot’s free tier, your host’s monitor, or yes, Jetpack Monitor’s free tier) hitting the health endpoint as a backstop for full-outage detection.
Where Jetpack Monitor wins clearly: it’s free at the basic tier, the architecture is right, and the WordPress.com mobile app pushes notifications in addition to email. If you’re already running Jetpack and the basic monitor’s check frequency is enough, you have no reason to pay for ours.
Where BD wins narrowly: no Jetpack connection, no WordPress.com account, local incident database (auditable, exportable), the REST health endpoint for integration with external systems, and the bundle pricing if you’re already paying for BD Security or BD Backup. The plugin is also much smaller — it’s one menu, two tabs, and a settings table. It doesn’t drag along Jetpack’s broader feature set.
Honest summary: for pure uptime monitoring, the right answer is an external service, and Jetpack Monitor’s free tier is one of the best free options available. BD Uptime Monitor is for operators who want incident logging inside WordPress and a health endpoint they can poll from elsewhere — and who already use BD plugins. We’re not pitching this as “better than Jetpack”; we’re pitching it as a different shape of tool that fits different setups.