This post originally appeared on guardr.io/blog/vs-hardenize.
Hardenize was one of the best tools for tracking security posture across a portfolio of websites. After Red Sift acquired it, the self-serve tier was removed and pricing moved to $5,000+/year — aimed at enterprise security teams, not agencies or freelancers.
If you were on the self-serve tier, this post is for you.
What you're probably looking for
A replacement that covers the same monitoring surface as Hardenize:
- Security headers (CSP, HSTS, X-Frame-Options, Referrer-Policy, Permissions-Policy)
- TLS and SSL certificate expiry — alerts at 30 and 7 days before expiry
- DNS security (DNSSEC, CAA records)
- Cookie attribute checks (Secure, HttpOnly, SameSite)
-
Exposure path detection (
.git,.env,wp-login.php,phpinfo.php) - Continuous monitoring with alerts — not manual spot checks
...without a $5K/year contract.
How Guardr fits
Guardr is a self-serve security posture monitor built for web agencies and developers managing multiple sites.
It covers everything above plus uptime monitoring, and includes platform-specific fix instructions per finding — the exact Cloudflare, Nginx, or Apache config snippet, not just a description of the problem.
| Feature | Hardenize | Guardr |
|---|---|---|
| Security header monitoring | ✅ | ✅ |
| TLS / cert expiry alerts | ✅ | ✅ |
| DNS security checks | ✅ | ✅ |
| Cookie security | ✅ | ✅ |
| Exposure path detection | ✅ | ✅ |
| Uptime monitoring | ❌ | ✅ |
| Fix instructions per platform | ❌ | ✅ |
| Self-serve available | ⛔ Gone | ✅ |
| Starting price | $5K+/year | $7/month |
Letter grade, tracked over time
Every site gets an A–F grade based on its full security configuration — TLS, headers, DNS, cookies, and exposure paths. The grade is tracked over time so you can see when a deployment caused a regression, and alerts fire when it drops.
Free scanner — no login needed
You can scan any URL for free at guardr.io — no account required. You'll get a letter grade and full breakdown of every misconfiguration, with fix instructions included.
From there you can set up continuous monitoring with one click.
Full comparison at guardr.io/blog/vs-hardenize.
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