I've been using a free Pingdom account for a few years to get notifications when different websites were down. I wanted to get SMS notifications (in addition to email notifications), but the only way to do that (besides paying for a relatively expensive full account) was to add my cell number's SMS gateway address [phone number]@sms.att.net. I did that for a while, but wasn't satisfied with the experience (each notification comes from a different number, and is formatted strange). Also, while Pingdom covers every scenario imaginable, I just wanted to be able to make sure a few web pages were responding with a 200 OK, and my main servers were online.
After surveying the landscape of monitoring services, I noticed few did everything I wanted (notify me when my site is down, allow me to track a few sites, and send me text messages and emails) for less than $30-50/year. So, after doing a little research, I found I could offer the exact service I wanted for around $10-15/year (that's $1.00-1.50/month) if I did it on my own. And so I built Server Check.in.
Server Check.in uses Stripe for payment acceptance (leagues beyond PayPal in terms of UX and DX), Twilio for SMS notifications ($0.01/message is bearable, and means there's room for a small profit), and Drupal on a LAMP server. Drush ('DRUpal SHell') handles most of the back-end (processing queues, checking servers, etc.), and I built the responsive HTML5 theme using Zen. Three custom modules drive the site, and integrate the notification and payment services. I have a post that explains the architecture with more detail here: http://www.lifeisaprayer.com/blog/2012/server-checkin-websit...
I stuck with what I know (a LAMP stack) for this project, though I'm dabbling in Python and Node.js to see if I might want to move more of the backend services away from PHP and shell scripting. I hope the service will grow large enough that I'll need to expand horizontally, but right now there's plenty of room for an initial batch of users.
Also, check out the 404 page; I made a little easter egg that I hope I can make more interesting over time :)
I'd appreciate any feedback; especially any ideas for improvement, or ways I could make it a more enticing service for other developers.
If you'd like to sign up, here's a coupon code for 20% off your first year: hn_twenty_off
After surveying the landscape of monitoring services, I noticed few did everything I wanted (notify me when my site is down, allow me to track a few sites, and send me text messages and emails) for less than $30-50/year. So, after doing a little research, I found I could offer the exact service I wanted for around $10-15/year (that's $1.00-1.50/month) if I did it on my own. And so I built Server Check.in.
Server Check.in uses Stripe for payment acceptance (leagues beyond PayPal in terms of UX and DX), Twilio for SMS notifications ($0.01/message is bearable, and means there's room for a small profit), and Drupal on a LAMP server. Drush ('DRUpal SHell') handles most of the back-end (processing queues, checking servers, etc.), and I built the responsive HTML5 theme using Zen. Three custom modules drive the site, and integrate the notification and payment services. I have a post that explains the architecture with more detail here: http://www.lifeisaprayer.com/blog/2012/server-checkin-websit...
I stuck with what I know (a LAMP stack) for this project, though I'm dabbling in Python and Node.js to see if I might want to move more of the backend services away from PHP and shell scripting. I hope the service will grow large enough that I'll need to expand horizontally, but right now there's plenty of room for an initial batch of users.
Also, check out the 404 page; I made a little easter egg that I hope I can make more interesting over time :)
I'd appreciate any feedback; especially any ideas for improvement, or ways I could make it a more enticing service for other developers.
If you'd like to sign up, here's a coupon code for 20% off your first year: hn_twenty_off