Checkmk vs Middleware
Checkmk
checkmk.com
Middleware
middleware.ioSide by side
| Figure | Checkmk | Middleware |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $275/mo | $0.30/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | Yes |
| Android | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 5 | 3 |
| Spec score · Kubernetes Monitoring | 9.4 (#1) | 9.0 (#5) |
| Spec score · Container Monitoring | 9.4 (#1) | 9.0 (#3) |
| API | The REST API is designed to cover functionality exposed by the GUI and command line, with OpenAPI documentation generated from the same source as the software. | Middleware's documentation lists a Public API and links to API documentation. |
| Founded | 2007 | 2022 |
| Headquarters | Munich, Germany | San Francisco, California |
| Integrations | Checkmk advertises more than 2,000 built-in integrations covering hardware, networks, applications, operating systems and cloud or container platforms. | Documented integrations include AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Vercel, databases, Datadog, Grafana, Prometheus, Logstash, Fluentd and the OpenTelemetry Collector. |
| Licence | Checkmk Community code is described as GPL v2 licensed, while commercial editions add proprietary enterprise functionality. | The hosted Middleware platform is proprietary, while its public React Native SDK repository is licensed Apache 2.0. |
| Rating on G2 | 4.7 out of 5 from 306 reviews. | 4.7 out of 5 from 56 reviews |
| Security practices | The Trust Center states that Checkmk performs annual third-party penetration testing and maintains security, vulnerability-management and access-control policies. | Its security page says it conducts regular penetration testing and vulnerability assessments and uses network firewalls, intrusion detection/prevention, and traffic filtering. |
| Support | The Pro plan includes professional support for 8h x 5d, while Ultimate includes 10h x 5d and can be upgraded to 24h x 5d. | Free users receive community support, pay-as-you-go customers get a dedicated Slack or Teams channel, and custom-contract customers receive an account team and 24x7 support. |
| What it does | Checkmk provides unified infrastructure monitoring and observability across servers, networks, applications, databases, cloud, containers and user experience. | Middleware is a cloud observability platform that collects telemetry, logs and events and presents dashboards, alerts and AI-driven root-cause analysis. |
Plans
Checkmk
- CommunityFree
- Synthetic MonitoringFree
- Pro$275 a month
- Cloud$290 a month
- Ultimate$400 a month
In their own words
Checkmk
Checkmk monitors cloud, hybrid, and data center infrastructure, including containers and networks. For web, mail, and database servers, it combines more than 2,000 smart checks with automatic discovery and network mapping. Monitoring can use native agents for Windows, Linux, and other systems, agentless SNMP and TCP/UDP checks, or API-based checks over HTTP/XML, SSH, or TELNET. Cloud coverage includes AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, with automatic component detection and Quick Setup. One instance can monitor thousands of servers, while distributed monitoring supports horizontal scaling. Community includes more than 2,000 integrations and is intended for smaller environments, scaling to approximately 100 hosts. The software can run on customer hardware or virtualized infrastructure, with Linux distribution packages, Docker, and a Virtual Appliance. The Community plan is free forever and includes community support. The pricing note lists paid plans from €190/mo (annual) and a 30-day trial. Other listed plan prices use USD: Pro is $275 a month, Cloud is $290 a month, and Ultimate is $400 a month. Platforms include API, Linux, macOS, self-hosted, web, and Windows.
Middleware
Middleware is a hybrid observability platform for detecting and resolving issues across infrastructure, application performance, and real-user monitoring. Its listed coverage includes infrastructure monitoring, logs, metrics, distributed tracing, database monitoring, synthetic monitoring, browser testing, and LLM observability. The AI SRE Agent and OpsAI capabilities include root cause analysis, automatic issue detection, faster issue solving, and automatic PR generation. The Free Forever plan costs nothing and includes up to 100GB of data, 1k RUM sessions, 20k synthetic checks, 10 browser test runs, and 2 million OpsAI tokens, with 14-day retention and community support. Pay As You Go costs $0.30 a month, billed according to use, with default 30-day retention. Middleware lists 450+ integrations and a Public API. It runs on Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, web, Windows, and API. The company says it encrypts customer data in transit and at rest using TLS 1.2+ and AES-256.