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

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

Nice writeup on your implementation.

Just realized I had KeepAlive on; some people were waiting a bit for a connection—sorry about that!

Also noticed a lot of people are trying to use the 404 page a bit more as a terminal session—I had plans on making that work a bit better, but didn't have time to finish all of it and keep it secure. Soon...

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.)

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.