Best alternative to Probely, meet Defenso.
Probely is a developer-friendly DAST scanner with a strong API and CI integration. Defenso shares that developer-first, probe-the-app approach and adds a managed firewall, uptime monitoring and a mobile alarm so finding and fixing live in one place.
Why teams pick Defenso over Probely.
Probely is one of the nicer DAST tools for developers. It actively crawls and attacks your web apps and APIs, has a clean API of its own and slots into CI pipelines, and it explains findings in a way engineers can act on. If dynamic application security testing in your pipeline is exactly what you need, Probely does it well.
The reason to look for a Probely alternative is that dynamic scanning, on its own, still leaves gaps. It probes your app, but it does not block the attack it finds, monitor whether the app is up, or scan the repository behind it. Defenso keeps the developer-first, actively-probing scanner and puts it in the same account as a managed firewall, uptime and SSL monitoring, repo secret scanning and a call-style phone alarm, so the loop from find to fix to protect never leaves one tool.
Switching from Probely to Defenso.
Like Probely, Defenso actively probes rather than pattern-matches: the scheduled pentest attacks your live site and APIs the way a real tester would, grades the result A to F and attaches a fix to each finding, with a deep pass on the Max plan that reaches ports and misconfigurations a shallow crawl skips. This attacker-style probing is the expensive part at most vendors, and here it is on every plan, including free.
What surrounds it is what a standalone DAST tool leaves out. A one-line SDK turns on a managed WAF with 50k+ rules and automatic API rate limiting, so a finding is blocked in production while you patch it. The same account watches uptime, SSL and domain expiry, scans your repository for leaked keys, and rings a phone alarm through Do Not Disturb when something real happens, all failing open with about 4ms added.
Migration takes minutes and needs no rip-out: run Defenso beside Probely, compare the findings and the coverage, and keep what serves your team best. The free tier has no card and includes a real monthly pentest, with annual billing about 25% under monthly.
Compare Defenso with the rest.
How to switch from Probely without a monitoring gap.
Migrating off Probely is a five-minute job, not a project. You keep Probely live while you set Defenso up, move your sites and alerts across, switch on the WAF and pentest Probely never offered, and only then cancel. Here is the exact order.
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01
Keep Probely running while you set up
No rip-and-replace. Create a free Defenso account and add your sites there first, and Probely stays live the whole time, so there is never a monitoring gap during the move.
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02
Add your sites and endpoints
Point Defenso at the same URLs, domains and API endpoints you watch in Probely. Uptime checks, SSL and domain-expiry monitoring and a public status page turn on the moment a site is added: no agent to install, no DNS change.
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03
Wire up the alerts you already use
Connect email, Slack, Discord, Telegram or a signed webhook, and install the Defenso Alerts phone app. The call-style Alarm level rings through silent mode and Do Not Disturb for the 3am outage you cannot sleep through, something Probely cannot do.
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04
Turn on the security Probely does not have
This is the real upgrade: a managed WAF in one SDK line, a scheduled pentest that grades your site A–F, repo and secret scanning, and active deception, all in the same account, at no extra vendor. Monitoring and security stop being two bills.
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05
Run both for a cycle, then cancel Probely
Watch the two side by side for a billing cycle. Once you trust the Defenso alerts and grades, cancel Probely and consolidate. Most teams find they were paying for uptime and still had no security layer at all.
Frequently asked questions.
Everything people ask before they switch from Probely. Still unsure? We are one message away.
For developers and small teams, yes. Defenso actively probes your web apps and APIs with a graded pentest like Probely, and adds a managed WAF, uptime monitoring, repo secret scanning and a phone alarm in one account, so finding and fixing live together.
Yes. The pentest actively tests your running site and APIs, not just known patterns, and the deep pass on the Max plan checks ports, admin endpoints and misconfigurations. Every finding is graded with a concrete fix.
It blocks and monitors, not just scans. The managed WAF with 50k+ rules and automatic API rate limiting stops findings in production, and you also get uptime monitoring, repo scanning and a call-style alarm that a pure DAST tool does not bundle.
Yes, no card needed. Free includes a monthly surface pentest, basic managed WAF, uptime and a status page. Paid plans add deep pentests, repo scanning and unlimited scans, with yearly billing roughly 25% cheaper than monthly.
Get more than monitoring, for free.
No card, no install. Add a site and get uptime, a managed firewall, a pentest and a phone alarm in one account.