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Comment by adrienjarthon | Hacker News Reader

I run https://updown.io since 2012, a website monitoring service I created. I'm working about 5-10 hours per week on it. It makes about $6,000 per month and is still growing linearly. I also keep a full-time job alongside for now as an engineering manager. The key for me is to take time, make something useful, delight your clients, and don't try to become uber or airbnb.

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Awesome job. This type of service is critical for e-commerce businesses like mine.

Just curious, I see you accept payment in crypto. What percentage of customers pay with crypto, and how has that changed since 2012?

Thanks Haha, less than 1% now that the trend is over, when I added it (2014) it was around 5%.

Hope you kept those coins -- must've made a decent chunk of change on the valorization of those alone!

I kept only a small part, I sold most of them right away as there were already over-valued to me ^^

Awesome! Happy updown.io customer here. We use it for https://www.pickfu.com Always happy to support fellow entrepreneurs.

Ironically, your pricing page is down. Starting an updown competitor now!

I just checked it and looks awesome! I’d have used it in a previous startup job if I just knew about your product back then.

Special mention goes to the landing page as you list all the features right away, no bs and a clear cost calculator. Couldn’t ask for more :)

Thanks <3

WOW! This exactly what I've been looking for :D And if the pricing calculator is correct, it seems way to cheap :D

It is quite cheap indeed, I try to keep a fair pricing :)

Ha neat! I was actually looking at your product a few hours ago. Might use it in the not-so-far future.

Sounds great ;) let me know if you have any question.

Can you explain who you customers are and why they want to know the stats for uptime and would be willing to pay for it?

Just waging a guess here, but people / businesses who depend on data from those websites?

I'm curious too. Tracking your own website makes sense but there're definitely better ways if that's your own website. Why do people want to track other website regularly?

I think you're giving too much weight to what's in their example image. I use a competitor's free tier to monitor my own stuff. Using a SaaS is better for several reasons:

  1. Don't have to install / maintain anything.
  2. Who monitors the monitoring?
  3. Monitoring from inside my network doesn't always fully approximate end-user availability.

That's pretty much it, my customers are people who have websites and want to be the first to know when there's an issue on it so they can fix it, in which case a SaaS solution is usually better than some internal tools because it eliminates setup/maintenance, keeps working when all your infrastructure is down and monitors everything (including internet link). Some other clients monitor website they do not own when they depend on it, for example as a vendor I could monitor Amazon if I sell products on it to be aware of any issue, or if I'm a digital customer engagement platform (what my full-time job does) I can monitor services I interact with like facebook API, twitter API, etc.

I am a customer, I run a bunch of personal sites and hobby projects. updown.io is wonderfully cheap, the pay as you go model is perfect for my monitoring needs. I have no need for the stats, just the monitoring which it does well.

how much time do you spend maybe talking to people who are constant clients? or is there little interaction?

Probably half of the time (~2-3h per week) is spent answering questions/requests from clients or helping them diagnose downtime. I try to improve the product to make sure my clients don't need me so that when they do I can help them properly.

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