Show HN: Server Check.in - inexpensive website uptime monitoring

Re:Show HN: Server Check.in - inexpensive website uptime mon... by scottksmith95 on Monday December 10, 2012 @04:42PM (#4901668)

I currently use http://www.uptimerobot.com which is free, up to 50 sites, does checks every 5 minutes, has an API, and alerts by email, SMS, Twitter, RSS or push notifications for iPhone/iPad. I notice you offer latency stats which is nice. Are there any other differences that would sway myself or others to pay for your service vs. their free service?

Thanks in advance.

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Re:Show HN: Server Check.in - inexpensive website uptime mon... by geerlingguy on Monday December 10, 2012 @04:53PM (#4901724)

Server Check.in will never have ads, and the privacy policy (https://servercheck.in/privacy) is pretty clear cut. The revenue comes from the users, so the service is 100% user-focused.

I noticed their service when building Server Check.in, but didn't create an account for testing, so can't say anything with 100% certainty. However...

- SMS is not free (unless they're using email-to-SMS gateways), so I'm not sure how they're supporting that, unless they have alternative revenue streams.

- Database bandwidth/storage for more than a few servers costs money—I've calculated at least a few MB/month/server, meaning the data storage and access is a real cost I have to find money for.

Finally, they mention on their about page that they won't do paid until at least Feb. 2013, so I don't know if they'll still be free after that anyways :-/

(This is not to say I don't think their service is bad or anything—I think it looks like a worthy alternative... it's just not what I wanted to use, otherwise, I wouldn't have built Server Check.in.)

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Re:Show HN: Server Check.in - inexpensive website uptime mon... by scottksmith95 on Monday December 10, 2012 @04:57PM (#4901739)

Thanks for your response and kudos to a very clean UI, powerful feature set, and low cost.

You are correct, they are using email-to-SMS gateways.

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Re:Show HN: Server Check.in - inexpensive website uptime mon... by geerlingguy on Monday December 10, 2012 @05:03PM (#4901761)

Sure thing! I considered using email-to-SMS and lowering the cost to < $1.00/month, but didn't want to make that compromise.

I do have to limit the SMS messages to 50/month (600/year) maximum at this point (see: https://servercheck.in/sms), until I can better track people's usage patterns and make sure I don't get hammered with larger fees than I'm taking in. That limit will hopefully be lifted at some point.

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