Port monitoring shipped — three features live, looking for people interested in becoming beta testers.
Quick follow-up to last time.
Since the last post, port monitoring is live. That makes three of the core monitoring features shipped — uptime, SSL, and now port checks.
Here's what's new:
Port monitoring — TCP and UDP probes from our servers. Configure a hostname, a port, and a protocol. We connect on your chosen interval (5/10/15 minutes), track the connection time, and alert on failure. Same patterns as the other monitors: 30-second confirmation rechecks before alerting, flapping detection, incident history, paginated check logs, and a 30-day uptime chart. Built for monitoring database ports, SSH, custom services, game servers — anything where uptime monitoring at the HTTP layer doesn't cut it.
Blog management — small thing but worth a mention. The marketing site blog is now powered by an admin dashboard in the application. Posts are stored in the app's database, the marketing site fetches them via a public API, and markdown is rendered server-side. Means I can write posts from anywhere there's a browser, and the marketing site stays a thin presentation layer.
Registrations are still closed while I build the rest of the features, but I've updated the closed-registration message to invite people to reach out via the contact form if they want to be part of the beta.
If you're a solo dev or freelancer juggling monitoring tools and you'd like early access to test, get in touch at observare.co.uk/contact.
What's next:
Cron job heartbeat monitoring is up next, then the agent for local/internal monitoring (process, Docker, IP, ports behind a gateway).
By the numbers:
- 3 of 11 planned features live
- 0 paying customers (still pre-launch)
- 3 blog posts published
- Started publically 4 days ago
What's the one monitoring headache that wastes the most of your time? Always interested to hear what people are wrestling with.
Hey, congrats on shipping port monitoring three core features live in just 4 days is solid momentum!
Really like how the TCP/UDP port probes (with connection timing, rechecks, flapping detection, and 30-day charts) fill that gap for databases, SSH, game servers, or anything beyond plain HTTP. The blog management integration (admin dashboard + public API) is a smart lightweight touch too.
One small observation while checking out https://observare.co.uk: the page has good flow and clean dashboard previews, but with all the detail packed in, adding a simple sticky nav or anchor links from the hero would make it easier for solo devs to quickly jump between specific monitors, alerts, or the contact form for beta access.
To answer your question: the monitoring headache that wastes the most of my time is constantly switching between 4-5 different tools (uptime robot + cert emails + healthchecks + manual SSH pings) and still missing edge cases like non-HTTP services or internal ports. Having everything in one clean dashboard would be huge.
This is really good work, building this for small operators excited to see cron heartbeats and the local agent next.
Would happily take a closer look and share more detailed thoughts if you're open to it.
Thanks for the detailed feedback, this is really useful.
On cron heartbeats:
I've been head-down on it the last couple of days and it's the feature I'm most excited about so far. The design has been a really interesting one to think through — the mental model is genuinely different from the other three (passive instead of active, you ping us instead of us probing you), so a lot of decisions had to be made from scratch rather than reused from uptime. Cron expressions with proper timezone handling, grace periods, explicit failure pings if your job wants to alert immediately rather than waiting for the grace period to expire. Lots to share when it lands.
On the sticky nav suggestion:
Good call. The marketing site's a bit of a long-scroll right now and there's no quick way to jump to specific sections from the hero. I'll add that. The contact form is also where I'm taking beta tester sign-ups while registrations stay closed, so making it more reachable is doubly worth doing.
Your multi-tool point is exactly the gap I'm trying to close. Four logins, four bills, four sets of alert rules, and the constant "wait, did I check the SSL on that one?" anxiety.
That's my daily reality and the whole reason the product exists. The bundled bit is the pitch — not "we're better at uptime than UptimeRobot", but "you stop juggling and get an evening of your life back."
Yes, I'd love to hear more detailed thoughts. You can reach me through the contact form ont he Observare website — that's the beta tester sign-up path while registrations are closed. I'll get you set up with an account once it's ready for outside eyes.
Cheers,
Michael