Looking for a Hardenize alternative?

Hardenize didn't disappear. The self-serve tier did.

Let's start with the correction, because most pages on this query get it wrong: Hardenize still runs, and its free public report still works. What changed after Red Sift acquired it is the buying model — continuous monitoring now sits on Business and Enterprise tiers with pricing on request. If you used Hardenize to keep an eye on a handful of domains without a procurement cycle, that specific thing is what you lost. SkyQon is the EU alternative that kept it self-serve: 5 domains monitored continuously for free, every price published, and evidence an auditor can verify.

Continuous monitoring, not a one-off scan — with alerts and history
Free for 5 domains · every paid price published · no sales call
EU company, EU data residency, mapped to NIS2, DORA and eIDAS

Last verified 4 August 2026, against Hardenize's and Red Sift's own public pages. Hardenize and Red Sift are trademarks of their respective owners; SkyQon is not affiliated with either.

Check your domain the way Hardenize used to

A scored report on your own estate, free. No account, no card, no agent — we only read what is already public.

We only scan publicly available information. Your details are used to send your results; see our Privacy Policy.

What actually changed

Three facts, each checkable on their own pages today. We link to the sources rather than asking you to trust the summary.

The acquisition, October 2022

Red Sift announced the acquisition on 13 October 2022 and folded Hardenize's attack-surface discovery in alongside its email-security line. Hardenize kept its name and its domain — this was not a shutdown, and treating it as one is the most common mistake on this topic.

Source: Red Sift's own announcement

Pricing moved out of reach of small teams

The Hardenize pricing page today lists two tiers, Business and Enterprise, both billed annually with the price on request. There is no published figure and no free plan to sign up for — the calls to action are Start Trial and Sign In. That is a perfectly normal enterprise motion; it is simply not what a three-person team with six domains can buy on a Tuesday.

Source: hardenize.com/pricing

The free public report still works

You can still run Hardenize's public report against a single domain for free, and it is still a good report. But a one-off check is not monitoring: it does not watch a certificate quietly march toward expiry, and it does not email you the morning a DMARC record changes. That gap — not the scan itself — is what people are actually shopping for.

SkyQon vs Hardenize, criterion by criterion

Everything in the Hardenize column comes from Hardenize's and Red Sift's own public pages on the date above. Where they publish nothing, we say so rather than guessing.

Criterion	SkyQon	Hardenize (Red Sift)
Free continuous monitoring	5 domains, monitored continuously, daily Trust Score and email alerts — free, no card	Free public report on a single domain, on demand; continuous monitoring is a paid tier
Pricing & buying model	All prices published: Free €0 · Starter €39/mo · Pro €149/mo · Growth €599/mo — self-serve, upgrade in a click	Business and Enterprise tiers, billed annually, price on request via demo or trial
Evidence an auditor can verify	PAdES-signed reports with a SHA-256 content hash, public verifier needing no account, hash-chained lifecycle ledger	Dashboards and reports; no signed-report verifier advertised on its public pages
Jurisdiction & data residency	EU company; customer data stored in the EU	Operated by Redsift Limited, registered in London — a UK data controller under its privacy policy
Coverage in one subscription	Email authentication, DNS/DNSSEC/CAA, TLS and certificates, CT log monitoring, subdomains, registrar, brand and look-alikes, post-quantum readiness, eIDAS checks	Perimeter discovery plus certificate and configuration monitoring; email, brand and certificate automation sit in separate Red Sift products

Product line-ups and pricing change. Check hardenize.com/pricing for their current terms, and our own method for every check is public at skyqon.com/methodology.

Credit where it's due

Hardenize was built by Ivan Ristić, who also created SSL Labs and wrote the book most of us learned TLS from. Its public report set the standard for what a domain-hygiene check should look like, and a good deal of this category exists because that work made the checks legible to people who were not cryptographers. We are not going to pretend the tool is bad. The argument here is narrower and only about fit: if you need continuous monitoring of a small estate, bought without a procurement cycle and stored in the EU, that is a different product now — and that is the one we build.

What to do if you relied on it

Nothing is locked in

Domain hygiene lives in your DNS and on your own hosts, not inside a vendor. Pointing a new tool at your domains changes nothing about how they behave — it reads what is already public and scores it. There is no export to negotiate and no migration window.

Re-establish the watch first

The risk in a monitoring gap is not that a report is missing; it is that a certificate expires on a Sunday while nobody is holding the pager. Get continuous checks and alerting back on your real domains first, then take your time deciding what the long-term tool should be.

Keep using the public report

Genuinely — it is free and it is good, and a second opinion on a one-off question is worth having. Run both against the same domain and compare. A comparison page that told you to stop using a free tool would be selling, not helping.

Hardenize alternatives — frequently asked

Is Hardenize shut down?

No. Hardenize still runs as a Red Sift product and its free public report still works on a single domain. What changed is the buying model: continuous monitoring is now sold on Business and Enterprise tiers with pricing on request, so the low-friction self-serve option that small teams used has gone. That is why most people searching for an alternative are not looking for a replacement scanner — they are looking for continuous monitoring they can buy without a sales call.

What happened to Hardenize after the Red Sift acquisition?

Red Sift announced the acquisition on 13 October 2022, positioning Hardenize's attack-surface discovery alongside its email-security products. Hardenize continued to operate under its own name and domain. Over time its packaging moved upmarket: the public pricing page now lists Business and Enterprise tiers only, both billed annually with price on request, and the site's calls to action are Start Trial and Sign In rather than a free plan.

Is there a free alternative to Hardenize?

SkyQon's free tier monitors up to 5 domains continuously — email authentication, DNS and DNSSEC, TLS and certificates — with a daily Trust Score and email alerts, no card and no agent. Hardenize's free public report remains available for a one-off look at a single domain, so the honest comparison is not scan versus scan: it is a one-off check versus continuous monitoring with alerting and history.

How much does SkyQon cost?

Every price is published: Free at €0 for up to 5 domains, Starter at €39/month, Pro at €149/month and Growth at €599/month, with a discount for annual billing. You can start and upgrade without talking to anyone. Hardenize's Business and Enterprise tiers are quote-based; check their pricing page for current terms.

Does SkyQon do attack surface discovery like Hardenize?

Yes, for the externally observable surface: subdomain discovery including takeover-prone records, TLS and certificate inventory across discovered hosts, certificates seen in Certificate Transparency logs that were never deployed, DNS and DNSSEC posture, and registrar and brand exposure. SkyQon runs entirely outside your network and reads only what is already public, so there is nothing to install.

Where is my data stored?

In the EU. SkyQon is an EU company and stores customer data in the EU, which matters if you have to name your suppliers and their locations in a NIS2 or DORA supplier register. Hardenize is operated by Red Sift — Redsift Limited, registered in London — which makes it a UK data controller under its own privacy policy.

Can an auditor verify a SkyQon report without an account?

Yes. Every SkyQon compliance report is PAdES-signed and carries a SHA-256 content hash, and anyone can validate one at the public verifier without creating an account. Lifecycle actions are recorded in a hash-chained ledger, so the sequence — detect, replace, revoke — is verifiable rather than just the end state.

Put the watch back on your domains

Five domains, monitored continuously, for free — email authentication, DNS, TLS and certificates in one scored report, with alerts when something moves. Start now and decide later; there is nothing to install and no card to enter.

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