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Why Is Uptime Robot Free (And Will It Always Stay So)?

We get many questions regarding "if Uptime Robot will ever become paid or not" and thought it'll be the best to share it in detail.

Why Is Uptime Robot Free?

We have launched Uptime Robot in January 2010 hoping to offer a non-complicated uptime service (where every website owner actually needs).

Also, we had created various web applications before but wanted/needed to experience how an application that runs -too- many tasks and has many users:

  • can scale better
  • serve stable
  • offer a good support system
  • and more..

to improve ourselves.

And, yes, we're learning too much from it, thanks to suggestions, comments which also help us a lot.

Will It Stay Free?

Well, that's the main plan. Simply, we want to support it with sponsors.

When the service was launched in January 2010, we had mentioned that it would stay for free at least until June 2010. And, lately, we updated this to December 2010 (in our about page).

Since the launch, we've contacted too many "possible advertisers" and, to be honest, it didn't go very well yet : ). However, we're still in contact with many others which means "it can always happen".

Uptime Robot currently runs on 2 cool servers and a remote account (for multi-location monitoring which we'll increase the number very soon) + it is improved regularly. Yes, it has a cost but we're not complaining. We learn a lot and that's something.

To sum up, we want to keep it free and will see how it goes.

P.S. Many users asked to donate, thanks so and so much. "You-paying" is the last option.

Any suggestions, thoughts? Please share, they mean a lot.

43 replies on “Why Is Uptime Robot Free (And Will It Always Stay So)?”

My suggestion: Spanish version, Is the second language of the world, and it will open UptimeRobot to lots of countries.

If you want to, I can translate all the strings if you email me.

Also SMS alerts using ClickaTell

Best Regards,
Josemi

I went looking for an easy, cheap monitor and found uptimerobot. I now know that 3 of my sites are down 30 mins to 7 hours at a time, several times a week. Of course I’m moving to a new webhost, and we’ll see what their stats show.

BTW the 2 other monitoring sites I tried didn’t provide info in any meaningful way and were much harder to use. I just wanted to know exactly what you provide: uptime each day …. or rather downtime each day.

Thank you thank you thank you. I couldn’t survive without you.

Wonderfull work guys! This is a very nice service! I agree with Saad: The finest uptime monitor ever created 🙂 !

Your service is a great asset. And I 3rd the motion “The finest uptime monitor ever created.”

Cheers 🙂

It is so motivating to hear that you like Uptime Robot and it helps your business.

@Josemi,
We’ll be adding a pro SMS gateway for sure. Not sure with the Spanish version but great suggestion.

@Dale,
Adjusting the frequency of the checks in our to-do-list.

@Balaji,
Google Ads will definitely ad some cash but we guess that’d be very low and their ads are usually discouraging for users. We’re looking/hoping for something more integrated.

Hi, are you planning to show a link of the monitors? so we can include it on our websites and show our clients how servers are responding. I am doing that with Siteuptime.

Many thanks

Hi,

I just newly signed up for monitoring my sites. And to test the service a took down my one site. The Uptime Robot is showing that the site is down, but I am not recieving any email abt it. It has been around 20 minutes since I took it down… is there anything i should recheck?

Thanks in advance

@Bart,

Yes, we’re working on such a widget.

@ST,

It may be an issue with the e-mails being sent to junk or blocked. Can I ask you to whitelist @uptimerobot.com domain in your mail application and try again? This way, we make sure it is not about the blocking of e-mails.

If that doesn’t work, feel free to contact us from support@uptimerobot.com.

A hosting company should be a nice sponsor. Send users with downtime a special offer from your sponsor hosting company en show the uptime of this sponsor on your front side. You should make a deal per customer you bring in 😉

Displaying ads is acceptable and common, because you provide free service and need to survive.
But please do not put excessive ads.
You can place ads in smart ways, like:

1. Up and down notification.
Place a small text ads in up and down notification.

2. Regular report.
You can add feature about reporting, maybe weekly or monthly. So the user will receive the report / sumarry.
And place small text ads on email email.

If a user want to be ads-free (on emails and web/account area), then they can pay small fee.

3. Donation.
Maybe you could add some donation button (Paypal or other micro payment provider is preferrable).

Anyway, you service is wonderful and easy to use.
Keep up the good work.

Thanks.

@Ruben & @Joyabo,

Like suggested, rather than adding too much ads, we’ll prefer not to add any to keep the site usable.

Thanks so much, these are awesome suggestions.

Also I wouldn’t mind when my site goes down and I get a SMS-notification of it to see ads of hosting companies on the SMS. That would be the best possible time for such advertising and I would think that hosting companies understand this as well. 🙂

Hello

You can use buysellads on your website. These adds are very popular in website/developer/designer community. Many of your users must be from designing/developing/hosting areas.

Hmm its not an easy task.
my suggestions

1) Adding a pro option is obvious, something with more features for a small amount of money.

2) After a you send an email or a sms because a site went down. The next day you send an email advertising other hosting / server options.

3) Maybe approach some hosting companies, and ask them to host your site, inexchange you’ll have a banner at the top that says “Sponsored by Go Daddy”

I would def prefer to keep the free service and have ads.

Either way awesome service, thank you.

Guys,

Thanks so much for the suggestions.

Inserting ads into alerts is a very good idea and we’re working on a while for that.

There were advertiser options to choose from, however, we want to make things solid and looking to work with a high-quality brand to sponsor Uptime Robot. We’ll see.

@Miska Närhi Dude set it up with Twitter notifications eg: MiskaMonitor (create twitter account). Got an iPhone? Add Boxcar and link to Twitter Account. Instant Push notifications at no charge to your phone. Soome cool settings in Boxcar to limit when you get notifications as well.

Cheers,

Dan

SUGGESTION ON PAYMENT MODEL

Mimic what Google Analytics do re: PDF emails sent with stats from the dashboard; saving one to have to log in.

On those emails insert the Ads. Base ads on location to it’s relevant. Include Filters eg: Don’t include web service advertisers if I set it up to send PDF alerts to my clients I supply web services to.

Great service, any more ideas I’ll be sure to add them.

The “alive ” testing is great. I hope you’ll add DNS testing someday.
Bind died on our server & we didn’t know it, until today when…….

just stumbled across this. nicely done.

one note, there is an alignment problem with the status bars in the My Monitors table. they are floating really high up and are actually more in the row above than they are in their own row. I am using Mac/10.6/Firefox 3.6 – in Safari and Chrome it aligns properly.

A pro option seems like an good idea, with the possibility to increase check rates cuz 5 minutes is really a lot, pingdom for example offers 1 free check per free accound but has an rate of checking each 2-5 seconds.

Thank you for this EXCELLENT service. I would like to promote you on my clients websites. Do you have any small banners that might say, Monitored By Uptime Robot? Or what would you like me to say?

Cheers,

RA

This is a good service guys, keep up the good work. I read thru the suggestions. I think either you must follow free service, donate + ads way or add your services and fees for the site, like sms or enhanced version.

I haven’t signed up for the service yet, but will do so very soon!

I don’t know how many US users you have or what SMS gateway you use, but I’ve considered Google Voice for some of my Web Applications. They don’t have an API, but one can be made on the client side fairly simple to login and send SMS messages. If you can get a Google Voice account, it’s free SMS messages to anyone in the US! That might be able to help save a little $$$

In fact, I don’t know what language you’d use but:

http://code.google.com/p/pygooglevoice/
http://code.google.com/p/google-voice-java/
https://github.com/aaronpk/Google-Voice-PHP-API

are some example APIs made.

Guys,
Thanks for all the suggestions. All of them are being considered.

@RA,
We’ll have the banners very soon.

@Josh,
We’ll look into Google Voice APIs. Ths so much.

Just wanted to thank you for the simplest, least expensive monitor that provides the absolutely most-useful info for the REALLY small operator. I’ve closed two storefronts and gone online with various websites (blog, business pr, e-commerce) to work through this crazy economy, and simply can’t afford $100/year for each application needed to keep each of these sites going (it’s kind of like having a storefront all over again).

Anyhoo, I’ve had trouble bringing up some of the sites from time to time and wondered what was happening. I went looking for an easy, cheap monitor and found uptimerobot. I now know that 3 of my sites are down 30 mins to 7 hours at a time, several times a week. Of course I’m moving to a new webhost, and we’ll see what their stats show.

BTW the 2 other monitoring sites I tried didn’t provide info in any meaningful way and were much harder to use. I just wanted to know exactly what you provide: uptime each day …. or rather downtime each day.

Thank you thank you thank you. I couldn’t survive without you.

@mary,

It is so great to hear that Uptime Robot helps and the simplicity offered converts as a good user experience.

Cheers 🙂

Hi Guys,
We found your service we like what you have. About free, like you said nothing is free. However a simple suggestion is to add a donate button to your site. I am sure many of your happy customer are more than happy to throw a few dollars your way.
Peter

I’ve only recently discovered Uptime Robot and I love it. I was actually sketching out plans to build a similar system for internal company use when I discovered UR, and frankly I could not have hoped to produce a system as elegant and beautifully crafted.

Thanks so much for providing such an invaluable service, and for free too. You guys must be drowning in good Karma about now!

Cheers,

Dan

@Pacman,

Yes, many users ask for donation and we don’t want to embarrassed if the service every gets paid in the future (no plans on that but still can’t see if a monetization plan other that going premium will work or not).

I think that, if it is free, it should be completely free. But, thanks so so much for offering that.

@Dan,

Yes, we feel good as many users feel good :).

Hi,

Been using the monitors for a little while and I really like it – almost providing a reassuring feeling that I might catch issues before the customers see them 😀

I have already confronted my ISP with a domain that kept dropping of twice a day – issue resolved with some hard fact from uptimerobot! Yay!

However, as my know-how is basic, does the monitoring affect the stats such as Google Analytics I have setup on the domains?

If so, is there some way to exclude/filter out uptimerobot?

Many thanks,
Jas

@Jas,

Great to hear that Uptime Robot helped for a better uptime.

For http(s) or port monitoring, Google Analytics stats aren’t affected as Uptime Robot requests doen’t download the Google Analytics code.

For keyword monitoring, yes, they would be affected and here is an article on another blog on excluding IPs:
http://just-ask-kim.com/google-analytics-exclude-your-own-ip-address-from-the-results/

For Uptime Robot IPs, please check: http://www.uptimerobot.com/about.asp

I second the comment by @bart and @jasper that you should have a uptime widget for inclusion on a website. Tried doing that with the RSS Feed and Feedburner, but it doesn’t seem to work; the feed is empty. ???

I was with a similar service for a short time (and I liked the uptime report they allowed you to embed in a website) but they were deceptive in their advertising, hence my turning to you. Hope this great tool becomes even better over time!

I really like this service, i have sent an email about contact to Mexico – Nextel SMS alerts, hope you can check it.

please answer my email, i have some ideas and proposals.

thank you!

god job. I think either you must follow free service, donate + ads way or add your services and fees for
the site, like sms or enhanced version. Thank for share

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