Every indie hacker has the same 3 AM nightmare: a cron job that processes payments silently died two days ago, and 47 customers never got their invoices. Jake, a solo founder running a $4K MRR email tool, discovered his nightly sync job had been failing for 11 days — only after a customer tweeted about missing data. He was paying $0 for UptimeRobot's free plan, which monitored his homepage but knew nothing about his 8 background workers.
The monitoring market is a $3.6B industry dominated by enterprise tools that charge per host, per metric, per seat. But there's a glaring hole at the bottom: the 2.5 million developers on Indie Hackers, Product Hunt, and r/SideProject who need to monitor 10-30 endpoints and a handful of cron jobs for under $10/mo. Cronitor ($20/mo starter) and Healthchecks.io (open source but self-hosted) are the closest, but neither nails the 'set up in 90 seconds, forget about it' experience that this audience demands.
The timing is perfect: the explosion of serverless functions, edge workers, and scheduled tasks on platforms like Vercel, Railway, and Render means developers have more invisible background processes than ever. A $7/mo tool that just works — with a gorgeous dashboard, instant Slack pings, and a 60-second setup — could realistically capture 2,000-5,000 paying users within 18 months, putting it at $14K-35K MRR.
💰 Revenue Blueprint
Three-tier value ladder to monetize from day one
Monitor up to 3 endpoints with 5-minute check intervals, email alerts only
Up to 25 monitors, 60-second checks, cron heartbeats, Slack + SMS alerts, 90-day history
Unlimited monitors, 30-second checks, status page, team members, API access, webhooks, 1-year history
Why Now?
Serverless and edge computing explosion means developers have more invisible background processes (Vercel cron, Railway workers, Cloudflare Workers) that need monitoring. The shift from monoliths to microservices creates 5-10x more endpoints per project.
📊 Market Evidence
The Market Gap
UptimeRobot is free but limited and ugly. Cronitor starts at $20/mo. Healthchecks.io requires self-hosting for full features. No one owns the $5-10/mo 'just works' slot for indie developers who need both uptime AND cron monitoring in one place.
Revenue Examples
Acquired by Better Stack; raised $3.2M. Focused on teams, leaving indie market open.
Indie Hackers interview — solo founder, bootstrapped
🏆 Competitor Landscape
How existing players stack up in this market
| Competitor | Pricing | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| UptimeRobot | Free / $7/mo | Market leader for free tier but dated UI and no cron monitoring |
| Cronitor | $20/mo | Best cron monitoring but pricey for indie devs |
| Better Uptime | $20/mo | Beautiful UI, acquired by Better Stack, but focused on teams |
| Healthchecks.io | Free (self-hosted) / $20/mo | Open source, great for cron but requires self-hosting for full features |
Market leader for free tier but dated UI and no cron monitoring
Best cron monitoring but pricey for indie devs
Beautiful UI, acquired by Better Stack, but focused on teams
Open source, great for cron but requires self-hosting for full features
Launch Strategy
1) Build MVP in 2-3 weeks with Next.js + Supabase. 2) Launch on Product Hunt with a 'Built for Indie Hackers' angle. 3) Post build log on Indie Hackers. 4) Share on r/SideProject and r/webdev. 5) Offer lifetime deals on AppSumo for initial traction. 6) Content marketing: 'Why your cron jobs are silently failing' blog posts targeting long-tail SEO.
🛠️ Recommended Tech Stack
Suggested tools and technologies to build this idea
Why this stack: Go is ideal for lightweight, fast health checks across regions. Fly.io enables multi-region deploys cheaply. TimescaleDB handles time-series uptime data efficiently.
Strengths
- ✓Extremely fast to build — core is just HTTP pings + alerting, can MVP in 2 weeks
- ✓Recurring revenue with very low churn (monitoring is set-and-forget sticky)
- ✓Clear $7/mo price gap between free UptimeRobot and $20/mo Cronitor
Risks
- ⚠UptimeRobot could add cron monitoring and undercut on price
- ⚠Low price point means you need volume — 2,000+ customers to reach $14K MRR
Score Breakdown
High demand, proven revenue, low competition — a strong opportunity
Market (20%) + Revenue (20%) + Trend (15%) + Competition (15%) + Build (15%) + Pricing (15%)
8 — Proven market with multiple funded competitors. Monitoring is a $3.6B industry. Clear demand on forums.
8 — Hyperping does $15K MRR solo. Better Stack raised millions. Revenue proof is strong in this category.
7 — Steady demand, not explosive growth. Serverless trend helps but monitoring itself isn't new.
7 — Crowded at the top (Datadog, PagerDuty) but a gap at the bottom. Differentiation is price + simplicity.
9 — Core product is simple: HTTP pings, cron heartbeats, alerting. Can MVP in 2-3 weeks.
8 — $7/mo is a sweet spot — cheap enough for impulse buys, high enough for real revenue at scale.
🚀 Start Building
Copy a prompt into your favorite AI coding tool and start building this idea right now.
Build a SaaS product called "Uptime & Cron Monitoring". ## Product Overview Dead-simple site and cron job monitoring built for indie hackers at $7/mo ## Problem Indie developers and small SaaS teams run dozens of cron jobs and side projects but have no simple, affordable way to know when something silently fails. UptimeRobot's free tier is limited and its UI feels stuck in 2015. Datadog and PagerDuty cost $23+/seat/mo — absurd for a solo founder checking if their Stripe webhook cron ran. ## Solution A clean, single-dashboard monitoring tool that tracks both HTTP endpoints and cron jobs (via heartbeat pings). One-click setup, 60-second checks, multi-channel alerts. No agents to install, no YAML configs. Just paste a URL or add a curl to your crontab. ## Target Audience Indie hackers, solo SaaS founders, freelance developers managing 5-50 services and cron jobs ## Tech Stack - Next.js 15 (App Router) with TypeScript - Tailwind CSS v4 for styling - Supabase for auth, database, and storage - Vercel for deployment - shadcn/ui for UI components - Framer Motion for animations ## MVP Features to Build 1. Landing page with clear value proposition 2. User authentication (sign up, sign in, forgot password) 3. Core product functionality based on the solution above 4. Dashboard for users to manage their data 5. Pricing page with at least 2 tiers (free + paid) 6. Basic settings/profile page ## Known Competitors UptimeRobot, Cronitor, Better Uptime, Healthchecks.io ## Key Risks to Address UptimeRobot could add cron monitoring and undercut on price Low price point means you need volume — 2,000+ customers to reach $14K MRR ## Deployment 1. Set up Supabase project and configure environment variables 2. Deploy to Vercel with `npx vercel --prod` 3. Set up custom domain 4. Configure Supabase RLS policies for security ## Instructions Start by creating the project structure, then build the landing page first. Use server components where possible. Make it mobile-responsive from the start. Focus on getting the core value loop working before adding polish.