Launching UpOrGone: Why I Built Yet Another Uptime Monitor

TL;DR: My side project went down for 6 hours and I had no idea. Built UpOrGone to solve this for indie hackers who don't need (or can't afford) enterprise monitoring tools.

The Incident That Started Everything

Saturday morning, February 2026. I was working on a SaaS side project — a simple analytics tool for newsletter creators. Nothing fancy, just solving a problem I had myself.

I woke up, made coffee, checked Twitter, felt productive.

Around noon, I got a DM: "Hey, your site isn't loading?"

My stomach dropped.

I opened the site. Sure enough — database connection error. The whole thing was down.

For 6 hours.

I didn't know. I had no monitoring set up. No alerts. No status page. Just... silence.

The Damage

Let me break down what those 6 hours cost me:

Direct revenue loss: ~$150

Small for most, but significant when you're bootstrapped

User trust: Immeasurable

3 users reached out (that I know of)
How many just bounced and never came back?

Reputation hit: Lasting

One user posted on Twitter: "Tried [product] but it's been down for hours. Not reliable."
That tweet stayed up. Still haunts my search results.

Stress: Maximum

Spent the rest of the weekend paranoid, manually checking if it was still up
Couldn't focus on actually building features

All because I didn't have basic monitoring in place.

"Just Use [Existing Tool]"

My first instinct: sign up for monitoring immediately.

So I did. I tried 4 different tools over the next week:

Tool 1: Enterprise Grade ($99/mo)

"We offer comprehensive monitoring with 50+ integrations, advanced alerting, incident management, on-call scheduling..."

I just wanted to know if my site was up. Don't need a war room.

Tool 2: "Free" Tier (5-minute checks)

Free tier only checks every 10 minutes. Paid tier for 1-minute checks starts at $49/mo.

I'm a solo indie hacker. I need fast checks but can't justify $49/mo.

Tool 3: Feature Overload

So many dashboards. So many charts. So many features I'd never use. Took me 20 minutes to figure out how to add a simple URL check.

Tool 4: Ugly AF

Look, I'm shallow. If I'm going to stare at a dashboard, it should be pleasant. This looked like it was built in 1999.

The Gap I Saw

None of these tools were built for people like me — indie hackers, solopreneurs, side project builders.

We don't need:

Enterprise features
Complex incident management
On-call scheduling for teams of 50
Integration with every tool ever built

We DO need:

Dead simple setup (5 minutes, not 5 hours)
Fast checks (1 minute is table stakes)
Alerts that actually work (email + Slack is enough)
Beautiful dashboards (we have taste)
Public status pages (builds trust)
Pricing that doesn't require Series A funding

So I built UpOrGone.

What I Built (And Why)

1. Simple Setup

Problem: Existing tools have a 20-step onboarding, ask for credit card immediately, require reading docs.

UpOrGone: Add URL, get alerts. That's it. 5 minutes from signup to first check.

No complicated configuration. No decision paralysis. Just monitoring that works.

2. 1-Minute Checks on Free Tier

Problem: Most "free" tiers check every 10-15 minutes. Fast checks require paid plans.

UpOrGone: 1-minute checks, even on free tier.

Because knowing your site is down 14 minutes later isn't really "monitoring" — it's just slightly-less-late bad news.

3. Beautiful Public Status Pages

Problem: Status pages are either an expensive add-on or look like geocities throwbacks.

UpOrGone: Every user gets a gorgeous status page at yourcompany.uporgone.com.

When your site goes down, users check your status page. Make it look professional.

4. SSL Certificate Monitoring

Problem: You forget SSL certs expire until they do, then you scramble for 2 hours trying to fix it.

UpOrGone: Automatically monitors SSL certificates, alerts you 30 days before expiration.

Set it and forget it. No surprises.

5. Multi-Region Checks

Problem: Your site might be up in US-East but down in Europe. Single-region monitoring gives you false confidence.

UpOrGone: Checks from multiple geographic regions to catch real outages, not just local blips.

6. Indie Hacker Pricing

Problem: $50-99/mo pricing is built for companies with VC funding.

UpOrGone:

Generous free tier (5 monitors, 1-min checks, status page)
Paid plans start at $9/mo
No "contact sales" BS

Built for bootstrappers.

The Tech Stack (For Fellow Builders)

If you're curious how it's built:

Frontend:

Next.js 14 + TypeScript
Tailwind CSS (obviously)
shadcn/ui components
Deployed on Vercel

Backend:

Supabase (PostgreSQL + Auth)
Edge functions for monitoring checks
Redis for caching (Upstash)

Monitoring Engine:

Distributed workers across 5 regions
HTTP/HTTPS checks every 60 seconds
SSL certificate validation
Response time tracking

Alerts:

Resend for email
Slack webhooks
SMS via Twilio (paid plans)

Infrastructure:

Everything serverless (cost = usage)
No servers to maintain
Scales automatically

Built the MVP in about 3 weeks of nights and weekends. Not bad.

What I Learned Building This

1. Scratch Your Own Itch Works

I built this because I needed it. That meant:

I was the perfect user tester
I knew exactly what features mattered
I could cut all the enterprise bloat

2. Simple Sells

The more I stripped away features, the better the product got. Fighting feature creep was the best decision.

3. Pricing Is Hard

Spent 3 days just thinking about pricing. Should free tier be 3 monitors or 5? Should paid start at $5 or $9?

Eventually: pick something reasonable, launch, iterate based on feedback.

4. Status Pages Are Underrated

I added status pages as an afterthought. Turns out, users LOVE them. They're a huge trust signal.

What's Next

Right now (March 2026), UpOrGone is live and monitoring hundreds of endpoints for early users.

Current stats:

50+ users signed up
300+ endpoints being monitored
99.98% check success rate
5 feature requests already implemented

What I'm working on:

More monitoring regions (Asia, Australia)
Custom domain status pages
Slack integration improvements
API for programmatic monitoring
Incident timeline (post-mortem builder)

I Want Your Feedback

If you're an indie hacker running a side project, I'd love to hear from you:

Questions I'm asking:

What monitoring features do you actually use? (not what you think you need, but what you USE)
What frustrates you about current monitoring tools?
What would make you switch from your current solution?
What price feels fair for indie hackers?

Seriously — I'm building this for people like us. Your feedback directly shapes the product.

Ways to reach me:

Try UpOrGone: https://uporgone.com (7-day free trial, no credit card)
DM me on Twitter: @uporgone
Email: hello@uporgone.com
Comment below

Why "Yet Another" Monitor?

I know what you're thinking: "There are already 50 uptime monitoring tools. Why build another one?"

Fair question.

Here's my answer: None of them were built for indie hackers.

They were built for enterprises, then tried to scale down with "lite" versions. That doesn't work.

UpOrGone is built from the ground up for:

Solo founders
Side project builders
Bootstrapped startups
Anyone who thinks $50/mo for monitoring is insane

If that's you, give it a try.

If it's not, that's cool too. There are plenty of great tools for enterprise teams.

Building in Public

I'm documenting this journey on Twitter and Indie Hackers. If you want to follow along:

Twitter: @uporgone
Indie Hackers: UpOrGone project page

I'll be sharing:

Weekly progress updates
User acquisition experiments
Revenue numbers (when they exist)
What's working and what's not
Technical deep dives

No overnight success story. No fake "we hit $10K MRR in 2 weeks" posts. Just real, transparent building.

The Meta Irony

The funniest part about building an uptime monitoring tool?

I'm paranoid about UpOrGone going down.

I monitor the monitor. I have alerts on my alerts. I wake up at 3am if something breaks.

The shoemaker's kids have the best shoes, I guess.

Your Turn

Have you had a downtime horror story? Built something after experiencing pain yourself? Running a side project that needs monitoring?

Drop a comment below. Let's commiserate about that time our site went down and we didn't know for 6 hours. 😅

And if you're reading this thinking "I should probably set up monitoring for my project"... yeah, you should.

Start monitoring with UpOrGone →

P.S. — If you use code LAUNCH at signup, you get 3 months free on any paid plan. Because I appreciate you reading this whole origin story.