whois is a registrar dump — query port 43, print nserver and expiry. It is not a mechanic. Tink installs in one command, watches the Linux host, explains what is wrong, and helps you fix it.
Accidental sysadmins land on whois because whois example.com shows the registrar without a dashboard. Then disk is at 91%, nginx dies, and last night's nserver lines do not say what to run. A filling /var is a Tink warning; it is not a WHOIS record.
Tink is the other job: detect the issue on the machine, say why it happened in plain English, propose the command, and run it only after you approve. Keep using whois if you already want a registrar dump on an SSH session. Use Tink if you run Linux servers and want a mechanic.
| Feature | Tink | whois |
|---|---|---|
| Setup time | 30 seconds (one curl | sh command) | Already installed. You still pick a TLD, a whois server, and whether port 43 is even allowed |
| What you get | Working monitoring, diagnosis, and approved fixes | A registrar snapshot: nserver, expiry, status — only while you are watching |
| Pricing | Free (Scout) / $9 / $29 per machine per month | Open source. You still pay the person who SSHs in after the outage |
| Hidden costs | None — fully managed | Rate-limits, thick vs thin registries, and whether anyone was watching when the domain expired |
| Monitoring approach | Agent on the server — CPU, disk, services, logs, certs, ports | Port-43 WHOIS. whois does not parse auth.log or propose a command |
| Configuration | None after install — heuristics and AI | Name, -h server, -p port, and whether the TLD even answers WHOIS |
| Plain-English diagnosis | Yes — AI explains root cause, impact, and fix | No — you read registrar and nserver yourself |
| Fix execution | Proposes and executes approved commands with an audit trail | Monitoring only — whois cannot restart nginx, free disk, or rotate a cert |
| Alerting | Built-in across 8 channels | None by default — whois is a snapshot; paging is extra |
| Predictive alerts | Yes — disk fills in ~6 days, memory and CPU trends | Live lookup only — whois does not forecast fill time or a quiet disk going bad later |
| SSH brute-force detection | Built-in — parses auth.log every scan | Not included — whois does not read host auth.log or journald |
| Machine offline detection | Agent presence monitoring with multi-channel alerts | If the host is down you cannot SSH into whois either |
| Public status page | Shareable URL with 90-day history | Not included — whois has no customer-facing status page |
| Weekly fleet digest | Automated Monday digest + daily brief when issues are open | Not included — a registrar dump is not a plain-English fleet narrative |
| On-call tracking | Built-in /oncall command + incident acknowledgment | Not included — wire something else into PagerDuty |
| Conversation interface | Telegram, WhatsApp, web dashboard, CLI | SSH + whois. No mechanic you text when /var filled |
| Learning curve | None — works after install | None to launch; higher to map an expired domain to the disk that filled |
| Best for | Freelancers, small teams, accidental sysadmins (1-50 Linux servers) | Operators who already want a registrar dump and will still SSH in when the box is sick |
Keep using whois when you already want that exact job:
The lookup is cheap to run. A working ops loop for five Linux boxes is not:
For a 5-server team, Tink Mechanic at $45/month is cheaper than the engineer who opens whois after the outage, and every scan includes a diagnosis a quiet registrar table will not type.
No SSH homework. No silent host. One command install.
Start MechanicAlso compare: Tink vs ping · Tink vs mtr · Tink vs tcpdump