How Does Certificate Monitoring Billing Work?
Certificate monitoring is billed at $0.01 per host per day. Each active monitor on your account counts as one host for billing purposes, except your free monitor.
Billing Details
Billing begins immediately when you add a new monitor. Monitors are billed daily based on the number of active monitors configured on your account. Paused and archived monitors aren't checked or billed; if you pause, archive or delete a monitor, billing for that monitor stops at the end of the current day.
Running a check with Check Now doesn't add to the price: a monitor is charged at most once a day.
Your Free Monitor
Every account gets one HTTPS certificate monitor free, forever: the oldest active HTTPS monitor on the account. Monitors on other protocols, such as SMTP, IMAP, POP3, FTP, LDAP or databases, are never free. Pausing, archiving or deleting the free monitor moves the free slot to the account's next oldest active HTTPS monitor. The free monitor is shown as its own $0 line in your charges and monthly usage, next to your paid monitors, and it keeps being checked even when your balance runs out.
For detailed pricing information, volume discounts, and plan options, visit the Certificate Monitoring pricing page.
What Counts as a Monitor
Each configured endpoint monitoring a service counts as one monitor. If you monitor the same hostname on different ports or protocols, each configuration is a separate monitor. For example, monitoring both mail.example.com:25 (SMTP) and mail.example.com:993 (IMAPS) would count as two monitors.
When using DNS hostnames that resolve to multiple IP addresses, this still counts as a single monitor even though the system checks all returned addresses. The billing is based on the number of configured monitors, not the number of IP addresses checked.
Managing Costs
Monitor only services that require certificate validation rather than every possible endpoint. Use tags to organize monitors and identify services that may no longer need monitoring, and review your list regularly to archive obsolete or duplicate entries: an archived monitor isn't billed, and keeps its reports and history. Where appropriate, consolidate by monitoring a load balancer instead of individual backend servers. See best practices for more cost management strategies.
Billing and Account Management
View your current monitor count and billing information in the Billing section of your account. Your charges show the daily monitor count under Certificate Monitoring, and the free monitor on its own line. The Billing card on the overview dashboard shows your paid monitors' daily cost and how many days your balance covers. Billing is handled through your account's configured payment method with invoicing available for applicable plans.