
Show HN: WebGazer – Simple and Affordable Website Monitoring Service - xtralife
https://www.webgazer.io/
======
fredley
I currently use [https://uptimerobot.com/](https://uptimerobot.com/) (free
plan) and I'm happy with it. The free plan seems to offer more than yours (50
alert delivery targets & sites watched, same cadence, same metrics, public
status pages included in free tier, including RSS, log exporting etc.). To
upgrade to pro would also be _10x cheaper_ for a similar service-level[1,2].
Why should I switch?

1: [https://app.webgazer.io/billing](https://app.webgazer.io/billing)

2: [https://uptimerobot.com/pricing](https://uptimerobot.com/pricing)

~~~
th0th
Hi, this is Gokhan from WebGazer Team. Thanks for the comment, we are aware of
the availability of cheaper services. As a matter of fact, some of them are
the reason we started WebGazer.

Alerting is a basic thing and it is done kind of OK by some others. But true
analytics is hard to get, we are still working on providing better reports. As
an obvious plus, we provide status pages we produce by the monitoring data
collected. This is for not making you depend on another service just for a
status page.

Also, we are looking for ways to make WebGazer a complete monitoring and
analytics platform. Plans still aren't very clear but server monitoring or
client-side analytics are some things we have in mind.

~~~
fredley
From what I see, the 'true analytics' available are exactly the same as what
I'm getting already. The data's available from my current service to download
raw if I want to export it to another analytics platform anyway. I already
have (free!) public status pages, as do most competitors' offerings, so it's
not another service.

I don't mean to shit on your product, it's good! I think you need to be
clearer about why I should pay quite so much more for it. At the moment it
doesn't seem worth it by a long shot. If you plan to build the platform out
into something more featureful, then say that, and give early adopters a
discount (so that they're not paying more for services which are currently
equivalent). Uptime Robot has been around for 8 years, and they're still
giving out early-adopter discounts!

~~~
StavrosK
Where do you get your status pages from?

EDIT: I wrote some OSS to email you if a service (like a cronjob) does _not_
check in[0]. Maybe I should add a status page component to it so you can see
failed services at a glance, that seems like the right way to do status pages.

[0]:
[https://gitlab.com/stavros/caduceus](https://gitlab.com/stavros/caduceus)

~~~
anderiv
My word I’ve been looking for a self-hosted alternative to Dead Man’s Snitch
for ages. Thank you for this!

~~~
StavrosK
You're welcome, that's exactly why I made it! Please open an issue if you have
any feature requests or notice any bugs!

------
nherment
Great idea to come into that space but it's going to be a tough battle.

For our company, we had to create our own status monitoring app (open source).
It's been a while and I had a short amount of time to find one.

A few reason for why we built our own:

\- almost no SaaS allow companies to make advanced (JSON) checks to the data
returned by a status endpoint. For example, we have cron jobs running data
imports. To verify that these are still running, a /status endpoint on our app
returns the last data import date based on the data imported in the DB. If
this delay gets bigger than a threshold then we fire an alert.

\- we're in B2B. Our clients need to have access to a status page with the
ability to download the list of incidents (for SLA & contractual purposes)

\- we need 2 levels of status pages. One for customers and one for our
internal teams with access to more monitors

\- SaaS providers either give the ability to automatically monitor or to
manually manage the status page. There is no ability to do both at the same
time

\- I wanted something simple. And advanced monitoring systems can definitely
do the above, but it's ops hell to setup and maintain. I have other things to
do.

~~~
StavrosK
I wrote something to help with the first case (it'll email you if your service
doesn't check in):
[https://gitlab.com/stavros/caduceus](https://gitlab.com/stavros/caduceus)

~~~
nherment
Very interesting way to solve it! I like the idea.

------
xtralife
We created WebGazer to provide simple, affordable and mission critical website
monitoring service. We are so happy to hear any feedback and ready to improve
ourselves.

WebGazer is a website monitoring service checking your website on a regular
basis. It notifies you with instant alerts in case of a problem. That way, you
have a piece of mind about the status of your service without manually
checking it.

You can publish the performance overview of the gazers through WebGazer Status
Pages. Status page is simply a gateway to users. Successful companies are now
going transparent and removing the wall between users with public announcement
pages

Publish performance of your system to users for more transparency.

Update for any ongoing difficulties on the infrastructure (we know everyone
has their servers on fire now and then)

Close the gap between your DevOps and audience.

~~~
nodesocket
Is there a way to configure a check to have to fail across 2 or even 3
locations before being considered down?

Also, didn't see a list of data center locations and providers. Are you multi-
provider (AWS, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean).

~~~
th0th
Before sending down notifications, we validate incidents 4 times from
different servers (TBH, not from different locations). List of IP addresses
that a WebGazer request might originate from will be available on our docs
soon.

------
LaundroMat
Is it possible to monitor specific parts of a page (eg via xpath)?

I have a nightly cron job running that dumps data to the database. On the
homepage of the website it says how many new entries were created overnight.
If that amount is zero, there's a 99% chance the cron job failed. It would be
nice to be notified if the homepage says 0 entries were created overnight.

~~~
mortond
My next project thank you :)

------
alexandernst
Can I monitor site performance? TTFB, min/max/average download size across
time, etc...?

~~~
akdoganaltan
Currently, our reports focus on timings. Like how long stages (dns resolution,
handshake, download etc.) of request takes.

Download size is an interesting idea, note taken. Would you mind if I reached
you for details on this?

Also, here is an example of what I mean by request stages timing:
[https://imgur.com/a/fKsVIc3](https://imgur.com/a/fKsVIc3)

~~~
alexandernst
Yes, sure, contact me and we can talk about it

------
TekMol
"This website is operated by WebGazer, Inc."

Is this a US company? I can not find any other info on the site. How would one
go about figuring out if this is a legit company?

In the US, do you have a public online-registry where one can look up company
details like address, revenue etc?

~~~
th0th
Here are the links:

* Terms of Service: [https://www.webgazer.io/terms-of-service/](https://www.webgazer.io/terms-of-service/)

* Privacy Policy: [https://www.webgazer.io/privacy-policy/](https://www.webgazer.io/privacy-policy/)

If you need anything else, we'd be glad to help, just e-mail at info ~at~
webgazer.io.

Edit: We are a Delaware company, I guess you can query on State's website.

~~~
TekMol
Thanks.

For me, living in Europe, it feels kinda strange when I am supposed to enter
my credit card details on a page that is kind of anonymous.

Over here, every site has to state the address, business id and other
information. And you can look up company history in a central repository.

------
tinyvm
This is interesting.

With Serverless Function and Serverless Database (Dynamo,Cloud Datastore
etc..) setting up something like this would basically take a few minutes.

The biggest value rely lies in the UI and the UX and all the extra stuff that
comes with it , like having pretty Analytics .

~~~
th0th
I have been developing web stuff for about 10 years. The dilemma I experienced
about monitoring is that when you do your own monitoring you need to make sure
your monitor is working, too. Relying on an external platform sounds saner
when I consider this. This is why we consider WebGazer "mission critical".

------
jswrenn
This has an unfortunate name-clash with eye-tracking software that's been
previously featured on HN:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=WebGazer](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=WebGazer)

------
jlg23
What does WebGazer offer that does not come for free with
netsaint^wnagios^wicinga?

I run icinga for various clients on dedicated VMs for $5/mo each, with
unlimited users, notifications and checks - and I still make a nice profit on
that.

