

Review my startup: http://nimbu.net/ - smart website monitoring - moomerman

I've finally taken the plunge and got my first startup out of the starting blocks.  It's been live for a week now and I've been adding new features almost daily.  I'd really appreciate any feedback.  http://nimbu.net/
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Kollner
I am a Pingdom customer and I think the thing that could make me shift is an
enhanced form of custom check - like what Pingdom has today but better.

In my setup I made a public service where external tools can retrieve some
realtime stats like current number of users, queue lengths, number of jobs
processing etc. Pingdom uses this service in different custom checks and it
kinda works, but I can't use the stats or graphs for anything. Not all checks
should be described in a status code and response time - a simple number would
be great. Make graphs with that and allow users to set a threshold for when
alerts should be sent.

Another thing missing is support for basic authentication.

As others have noted your front page is not really getting the message
through.

~~~
moomerman
That is a very interesting use case. I was thinking about allowing users to
create scriptable tests and then provide reporting around that, I think it
could meet your requirements. I will add the basic authentication stuff.

~~~
Kollner
Scripting. I am not quite sure what you mean by that, but please make it
simple. Pingdoms custom checks are simple because site owners just need to
make an endpoint that prints out an xml snippet.

Fx. I have a service here: <http://api.convert.io/realtime.svc/pingdom/queue-
length> which prints out:
<pingdom_http_custom_check><status>OK</status><response_time>2</response_time></pingdom_http_custom_check>

How about you offer the same, but add a few more check types. One with the
status/response time and another with just a single number.

<nimbu_http_custom_check><check_value>2</check_value></nimbu_http_custom_check>

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derobert
"Sign up" is two words.

After three sites, I was told I needed to upgrade. Clicking said link did
nothing. But can still add sites by going to <http://nimbu.net/addresses/new>;
an error is presented, but the site is added anyway.

Calling redirects failed is problematic; for example, try monitoring
<http://www.google.com/> The non-US pingers will always fail due to country
redirects. And <http://www.google.com/ncr> won't work either, because it
always redirects.

~~~
moomerman
Thanks for the comments, I will fix the bugs asap. On the redirect issue, do
you think that receiving a redirect on a url you are monitoring should result
in success? I hadn't thought about that before, maybe it should be an advanced
option, eg. do you expect a 200 OK or (dropdown list of other responses).

~~~
derobert
The advanced option idea sounds good. By default, I'd suggest follow the
redirect, and add the time of both requests together (e.g., do what a browser
would). Other options would be to not follow the redirect, or to accept only a
certain status code (e.g., 200)

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DenisM
Why aren't you charging money? Excuse me for being blunt, but this is
seriously silly - your purpose is to find if anyone will pay, right?

Also, one feature I myself would pay money for is sha256 validation of the
content of specified files (html, js etc). Since I'm using AJAX I don't really
have a problem with dynamic content. I want to be notified when/if my site is
defaced. I will pay $5/month and consider it a real bargain, if you have
multiple monitoring locations to make it hard for defacers to serve selective
content.

~~~
moomerman
Thanks for your comments. I am working on the payment system now, I decided to
launch the product early and gather some feedback while I'm doing that though.
At the moment you can only monitor up to three sites.

The content validation idea is very good thanks.

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dazzawazza
"Use of Customer’s Name and Company Name

Nimbu reserves the right to use your name and/or company name as a reference
for marketing or promotional purposes on the Nimbu.com website and other
communication with existing or potential Nimbu customers. To decline Nimbu
this right you need to email help@nimbu.net stating that you do not wish to be
used as a reference."

This is completely unreasonable. You want me to email you to decline the
right! You should have to _ask_ ME for the right!

~~~
moomerman
You're absolutely correct. I 'borrowed' the t&c's from somewhere else and I
would never enforce this. In fact the testimonials I have on the homepage I
have written to the individuals in question to ask for their permission. Am
removing!

~~~
dazzawazza
That's good news :) Good luck.

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marcamillion
It seems to me that the only thing you monitor is the domain name, like
pingdom. If this is the case, maybe you should make it clearer.

If not, you should make that clearer too. When I think of site monitor, what I
want is to be able to monitor my hdd, cpu usage, ram spikes, main domains,
etc. E.g. similar to serverdensity.com's offering.

Add some more info about exactly what you offer, and the cost. I know it says
free on the sign-up page, but you should make it clear on the main page that
this is a beta period.

Good job on actually launching though. Many people don't even make it that
far!

~~~
moomerman
Cool - I will make it clearer. I actually have the server-side monitoring in
development, but I'm trying to focus on this one product for now.

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catone
Clickable: <http://nimbu.net/>

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odvious
Your Pricing and Signup link is deceiving. You should separate the pricing
since that what I expect to see when I click on that link.

Other than that, I think the idea is straight forward and decently presented.
I would like you to highlight on that front page what makes you different
(read: exceptional) than other providers.

~~~
moomerman
Thanks, I take your point about the pricing, will separate them for now.

My aim is to provide more data analysis than other monitoring sites and give
you feedback on the performance of your web application.

~~~
odvious
Having a features page which explains that in a little more detail might be
beneficial. Same with have a feature 'grid' that compares your service to
others.

I have signed up and am testing it out, so far it looks very easy to use. I do
like the visualization with Google Maps to get various response times. Very
impressive.

~~~
catone
I would second this. Some of the features look really intriguing -- like the
uptime graphs and the global visualization -- but I want more info -- like how
often my site is pinged and from how many different locations.

~~~
ooorrr
+1 - I'm always looking for a better simple solution for multiple domains, but
I won't sign up until I know what I'm getting.

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moomerman
It has been interesting reading the recent getting users thread
[<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=902322>] as I've been trying a lot of
the methods on there to gain some traction, so far without much success. Any
other tips?

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guiseppecalzone
I'm a big fan of demos. If I don't see a demo, I usually won't go through an
install just to see how it looks.

~~~
moomerman
Thanks for the comment. There is no installation required so I'm not sure what
you mean. You can try the site functionality for free so that would work as a
demo. If you mean you don't want to sign up, then would a screencast work in
that situation?

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bbuffone
Something simple - Add margin to the left side. It is very hard to read with
the text up against the edge of the browser.

It would be good to understand the location of the server(s) doing the
monitoring.

~~~
moomerman
Thanks, will do. The servers are currently in Florida, California and London.
I will be adding more soon hopefully. I will create a Help/Info section
detailing where the servers are and more details about how often they
poll/what their user agent is etc.. You can see all the servers on a map in
the website detail page if you have a website setup.

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stevesmith155
Nimbu = Lemon in Hindi

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udfalkso
I need a way to remove a site from my list.

~~~
moomerman
You can remove a site by clicking the detail link (the link from the
dashboard) and then there is a delete link in the top right hand corner. I
will work on making this more obvious.

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elbac
why is this better then <http://pingdom.com> ?

~~~
moomerman
This is a competitive product I guess. I have used pingdom for years and most
of the development of this product has been to satisfy me as a developer and
what I want out of a monitoring product. I always found the interface of
pingdom to be cluttered and clunky and the information I really wanted was
always lots of clicks away. I admit though that the good things about pingdom
I have tried to incorporate into this product.

The unique aspect of this product is the individual analysis of data and
suggestions/alerts before your site goes down. It will warn you if things
suddenly change on your site, something that I don't think any other sites do.

