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Ask HN: Built a generic monitoring service – which niche to target?

6 points by curioustom ↗ HN
So I've built a generic monitoring service with Grafana, InfluxDB, Riemann etc. and modified the Grafana UI to support payments.

My problem now is what niche should I target for monitoring so I don't compete with the big guys like Datadog. I saw products like cronitor who target cron monitoring. Any ideas on a specific niche that is underserved with monitoring?

8 comments

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bostonhacker
Maybe you try to target one of the databases? I could see a PostgreSQL or Solr monitoring SaaS focused just on those?
TobyGiacometti
I've used Zabbix before for monitoring a server environment of moderate size. The flexibility led to certain things not being very simple to configure. So your idea of targeting a niche is certainly a good one, you can make your product easier to use. The 2 areas that would be most useful for me are cron and database monitoring.
curioustom
Looks like two people are recommending databases.

Is monitoring cron or databases something you would pay for? Would you be interested in being a trial customer?

TobyGiacometti
I am currently not managing any server environments anymore, so there is nothing to try it out with, but thank you for the offer! :) I certainly would have paid for it though...
cnocito
Are you concentrating on system/OS monitoring or application monitoring? Also, what price point are you thinking about? Cloud or on premises?
curioustom
Cloud, but there is nothing stopping me from packaging it up and having it run on premises.

OS vs Application is what I am asking here about. I could focus on OS/system monitoring or specific applications. If I go for generic application monitoring then I am competing with the big guys and that is what I am trying to avoid.

curioustom
As for pricing - looks like it would be niche dependent. I was thinking of nothing less than $99/month and then up since I probably could not support many small customers on a lower price point.
cnocito
So it's hard do charge anything or much for OS/Systems because there are so many free tools (it doesn't take long at all to deploy ELK + metricbeat for example). I would concentrate on applications, but then you are competing with DD and Librato anyways, unless you can cover applications that they don't monitor because they are too complex (I can't think of any though). I think the questions more than what niche to go after is what added value can you provide.