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Show HN: Simple self-hosted Sentry alternative with a 5-minute setup

telebugs.com

2 pointskyrylo4 comments

Hey hackers!

In January 2025, I started building Telebugs. It's an installable error tracker that works with Sentry SDKs.

I come from a Rails background and previously worked at an error tracking/APM company, so I figured: why not build my own? I wanted a simple, reliable tool I could own outright, without surprise bills for overages.

Telebugs is built with Rails 8, Hotwire, TailwindCSS, and SQLite. Like 37signals’ ONCE products (my inspiration), it’s pay-once: prep your hardware, run one command, and you’ll be up and running in 10 minutes (5 minutes refers to the actual installation time).

It supports push and email notifications, handles millions of errors per day (depending on hardware), runs in a single Docker container, and auto-cleans old data based on your rules. The idea is that you install it once and forget it.

I’ve shared updates on social media since day one, and today I’m launching it publicly. The whole idea of installable, self-hosted software was new to me, but building Telebugs has made web dev feel fun again.

It took 3.5 months of near-daily work to ship it solo. I now use it to track errors across all my projects.

Happy to answer any questions!

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This is an interesting project! I'm going to recommend it to my team at work, since we've been moving to try to self-host more of our services.

I've been about building a Once-style project myself, how do you deal with tracking the licences, do you have the ability to revoke them if someone breaks the licence?

Hey Chris! If you or your team have any questions about Telebugs, feel free to shoot me an email at kyrylo@telebugs.com. I can set up a private demo just for your team.

Re: your ONCE-style project. That’s exciting! I wasn’t sure from your phrasing whether you’ve already started or are just about to. What does (or will) your project do?

As for licensing: I do have the ability to revoke a license, which means you wouldn’t get future updates. But of course, I can’t take back anything you’ve already downloaded (the code stays yours).

Thanks, I'll let my team know.

Sorry I meant to say "I've been thinking about building a Once style project" I've just got a couple of not very well fleshed out ideas at the moment.

In terms of licencing it's interesting, I suppose you could have the app phone home periodically, but since it's source available, someone could just remove that call. I guess the main idea is just that it's software for businesses and legitimate businesses generally aren't going to break licence agreements.

Thanks, I’m looking forward to hearing from your team!

I plan to document what it takes to build a ONCE-style product. It'll probably be a blog post (or a few). If you're curious, feel free to stay in touch - links are in my bio.

The app doesn’t phone home, for the exact reasons you mentioned. I also don’t want it to feel like you’re locked in a cage. I’m trying to build something I’d genuinely love to use, and ONCE gets a lot of that right.

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