The short answer
If you run a hosting company or a large IP range and want cheap, wide blacklist coverage with a twice-a-day check, HetrixTools is hard to beat on price: $9.95 a month buys 256 monitors. If your business sends email that has to land today, such as order confirmations, cold outreach or client campaigns, the gap between checks matters more than the monitor count. That is the case BlacklistMonitoring is built for.
We check every monitored domain and IP on 109 DNS blacklists every 60 minutes on Starter, every 15 on Business and every 5 on Agency and Scale. We also watch SPF, DKIM, DMARC, MX, PTR and BIMI, parse your DMARC aggregate reports and run inbox placement tests. HetrixTools covers blacklists and uptime, not sender authentication or DMARC.
HetrixTools vs BlacklistMonitoring compared
HetrixTools figures are from its public blacklist monitor pricing page and can change, so confirm them there before you decide. Ours are on the pricing page.
| HetrixTools | BlacklistMonitoring | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry paid plan | Personal, $9.95/mo, 256 monitors | Starter, $49/mo ($24 billed yearly), 10 domains and IPs |
| Mid plan | Business, $39.95/mo, 2,048 monitors | Business, $149/mo, 100 domains and IPs |
| Top published plan | Enterprise, $99.95/mo, 8,192 monitors | Scale, $1,499/mo, 5,000 domains and IPs plus CIDR ranges |
| Blacklists checked | 94, plus Microsoft SNDS | 109 IP and domain blacklists |
| Check frequency | Every 24 h (Free), 12 h, 8 h, or 2 to 24 h on Business and Enterprise | Every 60 min, 15 min, or 5 min on Agency and Scale |
| SPF, DKIM, DMARC monitoring | Not part of the blacklist monitor | Included on every plan |
| DMARC aggregate report parsing | No | 50,000 to 25,000,000 messages a month by plan |
| Inbox placement tests | No | 50 a month on Business, 300 on Agency, 1,500 on Scale |
| Removal steps in each alert | Alert names the list | Alert names the list, return code, likely cause and removal link |
| Alert channels | 19 channels incl. SMS, phone, PagerDuty, Opsgenie | Email and Slack, plus Teams and signed webhooks from Business |
| White label reports | Partial on lower plans, full on Business and up | Agency and Scale plans |
| Where HetrixTools wins | Price per monitor, monitor counts, alert channel range, uptime monitoring in the same account |
How much does HetrixTools cost?
HetrixTools blacklist monitoring costs $0 for 32 monitors checked once a day, $9.95 a month for 256 monitors, $19.95 for 512, $39.95 for 2,048 and $99.95 for 8,192. Yearly billing is roughly ten times the monthly price. Every plan checks the same 94 lists, and the more expensive plans mainly add monitors, sub-accounts, SMS credits and a selectable check interval.
Per monitor, that is a fraction of a cent. The trade is time. On Personal a new listing can sit for up to 12 hours before the next check sees it, and on Free up to 24. For a sender pushing 20,000 messages a day, half a day on a Spamhaus or Barracuda list means thousands of bounced or junked messages before anyone gets an alert.
Why email teams pick BlacklistMonitoring over HetrixTools
- Checks in minutes, not hours. A listing caught after 5 or 15 minutes is a short pause. Caught after 12 hours, it is a lost campaign day and a hit to sender reputation at Gmail and Microsoft.
- The cause, not just the list. Blacklistings usually trace back to something on the sending side: a DKIM key that stopped signing, an SPF record over the 10 lookup limit, a third-party sender nobody approved. We watch those records too and flag the change that came before the listing.
-
DMARC reports read for you. Point your
ruaaddress at your workspace and we group every source sending as your domain, so a rogue platform or spoofer shows up by name. - Inbox placement tests. Business and higher plans include seed tests that show whether a message lands in the inbox, promotions or spam at the big US providers.
- Client workspaces for agencies. Separate workspaces per client and white label reports on Agency and Scale, built for teams that report deliverability to customers.
Who should stay with HetrixTools
Be honest with yourself about the job. A web host or VPS provider watching thousands of customer IPs mostly needs to know a listing happened at some point today so it can find the abusive tenant. HetrixTools does that well and cheaply, and it bundles uptime and server monitoring in the same dashboard. Paying more for 5 minute checks there rarely changes the outcome.
The picture flips when the IPs and domains are yours and they carry revenue. Cold email agencies running dozens of rotating domains use our deliverability monitoring for cold email agencies. Ecommerce and SaaS teams protect the transactional domain that sends password resets and receipts, and pair blacklist alerts with DMARC monitoring to catch the authentication break that usually comes first.
How to switch from HetrixTools in 15 minutes
- 1 Export your monitor list from HetrixTools, or copy the IPs and domains you send mail from. Skip web-only IPs that never send email.
- 2 Create your account and paste the list into the bulk add box. Domains and single IPs work on every plan, and Scale also accepts CIDR ranges.
-
3
Add the DMARC reporting address shown in your workspace to the
ruatag of each domain. DMARC accepts several addresses, so existing reports keep flowing. - 4 Connect email or Slack, or Teams and a webhook on Business and higher, and send a test alert.
- 5 Run both services side by side for one billing cycle, compare when each one caught the same listing, then keep the one that fits.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good alternative to HetrixTools?
For email senders, BlacklistMonitoring is the closest fit: 109 blacklists checked every 60, 15 or 5 minutes plus SPF, DKIM and DMARC monitoring, from $49 a month. MxToolbox covers similar ground at $129 a month for 5 domains. If you mainly need uptime monitoring, UptimeRobot or Better Stack are the usual picks.
How much does HetrixTools cost?
HetrixTools blacklist monitoring has a free plan with 32 monitors checked daily, then Personal at $9.95 a month for 256 monitors, Professional at $19.95 for 512, Business at $39.95 for 2,048 and Enterprise at $99.95 for 8,192. Yearly plans cost about ten months of the monthly price.
How often does HetrixTools check blacklists?
Every 24 hours on Free, 12 hours on Personal and 8 hours on Professional. Business and Enterprise default to 12 hours and let you pick an interval between 2 and 24 hours. BlacklistMonitoring checks every 60 minutes on Starter, 15 on Business and 5 on Agency and Scale.
How many blacklists does HetrixTools check?
HetrixTools checks 94 blacklists on every plan and adds Microsoft SNDS data. BlacklistMonitoring checks 109 IP and domain blacklists, including Spamhaus ZEN and DBL, Barracuda, SpamCop, SURBL and UCEPROTECT. The blacklist directory lists each one with its removal process.
Can I monitor domains as well as IPs?
Yes, on both. HetrixTools counts IPs and domains against the same monitor quota. We count them the same way, and each plan lists how many domains and IPs it covers, from 10 on Starter to 5,000 on Scale. Use the domain blacklist check to test one right now.
Does BlacklistMonitoring have an API like HetrixTools?
Yes. The Scale plan includes the REST API, CIDR range monitoring, SSO and an audit log. HetrixTools includes its API on every plan, so if API access on a small budget is the main need, that is a point in its favor. See our API docs for the endpoints.