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PHP Server Monitor vs Blackbox Exporter

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
PH PHP Server Monitor Simple PHP tool for monitoring servers and websites VS BL Blackbox Exporter Probes endpoints over HTTP, TCP, DNS, and ICMP
FeaturePHP Server MonitorBlackbox Exporter
Deploy effortUnder-an-hour setupUnder-an-hour setup
Health score19 · At risk84 · Excellent
CategoryMonitoring & StatusMonitoring & Status
LicenseGPL-3.0Apache-2.0
LanguagePHPGo
Setup difficultyEasyEasy
Min. RAM128 MB32 MB
Deploymentdocker, bare-metaldocker, kubernetes, binary
GitHub stars★ 2,188★ 5,882
First released20102016
ReplacesPingdom, UptimeRobotPingdom

What are PHP Server Monitor and Blackbox Exporter?

PHP Server Monitor

PHP Server Monitor is a lightweight script that checks whether websites and servers are up and sends notifications by email, SMS, or messaging services when they go down. It runs on common LAMP hosting.

  • Website and port checks
  • Email and SMS alerts
  • Uptime history
  • Runs on shared hosting

Read the full PHP Server Monitor guide →

Blackbox Exporter

The Blackbox Exporter allows Prometheus to probe endpoints over HTTP, HTTPS, DNS, TCP, ICMP, and gRPC. It is the standard way to perform black-box availability and latency monitoring with Prometheus.

  • HTTP, TCP, DNS, ICMP probes
  • TLS certificate checks
  • Prometheus integration
  • Multi-target probing

Read the full Blackbox Exporter guide →

PHP Server Monitor vs Blackbox Exporter: key differences

PHP Server Monitor is written in PHP, while Blackbox Exporter is built with Go. Licensing differs — GPL-3.0 for PHP Server Monitor versus Apache-2.0 for Blackbox Exporter. Blackbox Exporter is the lighter option, starting around 32 MB of RAM against 128 MB for PHP Server Monitor. PHP Server Monitor is the more established project (first released 2010), while Blackbox Exporter arrived in 2016. Blackbox Exporter has the considerably larger community, at 5,882 GitHub stars versus 2,188.

Why pick each one

Choose PHP Server Monitor if…

  • Very easy to deploy
  • Low resource use

Watch out for

  • Basic feature set
  • Limited graphing
PHP Server Monitor details

Choose Blackbox Exporter if…

  • Simple uptime monitoring
  • Tiny footprint

Watch out for

  • Needs Prometheus to be useful
  • No standalone UI
Blackbox Exporter details

Frequently asked questions

Is PHP Server Monitor or Blackbox Exporter better?

Neither is universally better. Blackbox Exporter has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are PHP Server Monitor and Blackbox Exporter free and open-source?

Yes. PHP Server Monitor is licensed under GPL-3.0 and Blackbox Exporter under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run PHP Server Monitor and Blackbox Exporter with Docker?

PHP Server Monitor: yes. Blackbox Exporter: yes.

Which is lighter on resources, PHP Server Monitor or Blackbox Exporter?

Blackbox Exporter has the smaller minimum footprint at 32 MB of RAM, compared to about 128 MB for PHP Server Monitor. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.

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