

Ask HN: We have created an uptime monitoring service, what can we do to improve? - saucersoftware

Souptime is a simple uptime monitoring service for any websites, such as blogs, and most TCP servers (UDP servers will be supported later). We offer reports, downtime notifications (via e-mail, SMS, Android app and soon a PC app), graphs and other statistical stuff. Basically we poll your website/server every 10 minutes (or more often depending on your plan) and let you know if something goes wrong while gathering statistics like uptime percentage, response times etc. We're aiming for simplicity and usefulness.<p>There are several plans, starting from a free one that should work for the most people. The paid plans are designed to be cheap yet useful.<p>Currently it's a very small service, so we only have 1 check server and the whole system isn't very redudant. We're obviously going to expand the system if people seem interested.<p>We'd especially like to hear from people using other similar uptime monitoring services to know what their current provider offers that we don't, so that we can match or outfeature all competitors!<p>http://www.souptime.net
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dotBen
Following on from my comment about the €/$ issue in the other reply thread, I
would say that right now the service offering is very limited.

I either need a lot more than just polling (and use CloudKick, Monit,
whatever) or if I only need polling because it's just a blog or whatever then
I'm not going to be prepared to spend much/anything.

I would work out what your bigger hosted competitors are doing, and find a
niche they don't serve. OR, work out the pain points of running self-hosted
monit and the like and offer something that isn't just a clone of the existing
players.

I would also add a "tour"/"Explore features" type page to explain what the
service does - is it pinging, checking the TCP banner on a given port, is it
making a request and fetching some content to check it against expected
response? Etc. Explain why that is helpful to me.

Don't assume I even know why I want monitoring! Show me what the
alerts/reports look like.

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dclaysmith
I'd start by taking the advertising banner off of your homepage. You'll spend
much of your time trying to get visitors to your site, why give them a reason
to leave. I doubt it will generate much income for you and will likely cost
you in the long run.

One feature that I don't think Pingdom offers (which monitoring software like
Nagios has) is alert escalation. (ex. After 5 consecutive timeouts, alert the
IT Manager, after 20 alert the CEO). I think there is some value there.

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chuhnk
In all honesty that is the worst way to get any input. A few details would be
nice? What have you currently implemented? Do you yourself see any flaws? What
are you trying to achieve? What are your similarities to a resource like
pingdom? How do you differ? What kind of input do you want?

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saucersoftware
Thanks, edited main post.

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dminor
What are the advantages of souptime over say the $10 pingdom plan?

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saucersoftware
Well for starters our similar plan costs only 3.95€, which is pretty much half
cheaper! It also includes more servers checks (10 as opposed to 5). Other than
that we pretty much offer the same things as they do.

Also, we have an android app, and soon desktop one as well.

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dotBen
Without even needing to look at your site I can give you a suggestion to
charge in US$.

And before you bash me for being a xenophobe American, I'm European :) The
internet is US$ centric, that's just the way it is.

Outside the Eurozone no one knows what 10€ is in their local currency.

Everyone knows what US$10 is in their local currency.

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saucersoftware
Thanks! Should be implemented within few hours.

