Oh Dear is one of the better-known subscription tools in its space — and at from €15/mo (~$16/mo) flat per-site, SSL + uptime + domain expiry included, one of the recurring line items people most often look to replace. If you're searching for a Oh Dear alternative you pay for once and own forever, Certwatch is the OneTimeSuite answer: $24, one time.
Why people go looking for an alternative
Oh Dear runs from €15/mo (~$16/mo) flat per-site, SSL + uptime + domain expiry included, and like most SaaS the bill never stops — cancel and you typically lose access to your own history. That's roughly $585 over three years. Certwatch flips that model: Real TLS handshake checks on a schedule with 30/14/7/1-day email and webhook alerts.
What Certwatch covers
- Traffic-light dashboard — Green over 30 days, yellow at 30 or under, red under 7 days, or for expired, invalid or unreachable hosts.
- Real TLS handshake checks — Node tls checks expiry, issuer, SAN list, chain validity, self-signed certs and weak keys (RSA under 2048, EC under 224).
- Domain WHOIS expiry — Best-effort registry lookups so the domain registration itself does not lapse either.
- Threshold alerts — Configurable days (default 30, 14, 7, 1) via webhook and SMTP email, with exactly one alert per threshold per certificate.
- Chain viewer — See the full presented certificate chain per check in the UI.
The honest trade-off
Oh Dear will keep shipping features, integrations and managed infrastructure that a pay-once tool won't chase — if that ecosystem is genuinely load-bearing for your workflow, staying is a fair call. For the core job, the math favors owning the tool: $24 once against from €15/mo (~$16/mo) flat per-site, SSL + uptime + domain expiry included forever. Two months of a paid SSL monitor covers Certwatch, and one cert it saves from expiring covers the 2am page it would have cost you.
Also worth reading
Certwatch's main head-to-head is with SSLMate-style SSL monitors — see the detailed comparison or the product page for the full feature list, FAQ and demo video.
Try Certwatch — $24, once
Real TLS handshake checks on a schedule with 30/14/7/1-day email and webhook alerts.