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Ask HN: Review my service (Monitor For Me)

2 points by JFitzDela ↗ HN
I apologize if this is outside the scope of acceptable behavior for HN... I posted a Show HN yesterday and didn't get much of any traction, so I figured an "Ask" for a review would be a bit more appropriate.

Monitor For Me (http://monitorfor.me, clickable in comments) is a service I built from my own need for it -- a simple, affordable app that will listen for my smoke detector to go off and send me an SMS message (or email) to let me know.

It also uploads a 5 second audio sample so I can listen to what triggered the alert, and I can request more samples at will to "check in."

brudgers mentioned that receiving a text message (as opposed to a phone call going out to police and/or fire) is not necessarily the first thing he'd want to see happen. I can certainly appreciate the sentiment -- you want instant response in a situation like this. My personal preference, though, is to make the judgement call myself (and avoid costly false alarms). If everyone else disagrees with me, well, I suppose I'll need to retool the idea, but that's what I want to figure out.

Also: I'm no designer. I tried to keep a simple, clean aesthetic, but if it's just plain unusable, please let me know.

I look forward to your feedback on any part of this: design, idea in general, usability, etc.

Thanks, John

Site: http://monitorfor.me

Invite Code: HNFTW (free 7 day subscription)

5 comments

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nudge
I think this is an incredibly good idea.

The pricing is bizarre though. I'm guessing the short periods of time are for short trips away or vacations? Lose them, or at least tuck them away as a minor option somewhere. Up front you just want the 30 day option, with a free trial.

Consider offering this to apartment building owners, landlords and insurance companies.

JFitzDela
Thanks! I'll see about cleaning up the pricing offerings. I'd like to offer shorter options for (as you mentioned) short trip takers, but if it's just confusing or unnecessary, it's certainly not doing any good.

I appreciate the feedback!

profitbaron
Your pricing model seems very strange. I recommend that you change your pricing so that you offer a package which is a monthly fee (and can be even tiered, so that you can charge for additional features).

For example, your service is similar to a service offered by ADT alarms in the UK; http://www.adt.co.uk/tv?ppc=aa-C1-bb&campaign=burglar_al...

As you can see their pricing structure is more expensive then yours and this is a good thing as users, can see real value from the service - especially with a higher price associated to it. The reason I say this is a good thing is because, I believe that you are pricing your product to cheaply and as a result people may not see value in it which is why I think you should consider actually increasing the prices you offer

For instance, I think people would be prepared to pay the monthly figure (or even more) for "peace of mind" that their homes are safe when they are on vacation.

You should use A/B testing on your pricing model to see which is the perfect price point for your product but currently it seems very low and makes me think as a user "is it really useful?"

Additionally, you should contact insurance companies and find out if users use this service, will it benefit their insurance premiums etc because, if it does then you can definitely advertise this as a bonus of using your product.

JFitzDela
Thank you for your thoughts, particularly regarding the low price point -- it's certainly something I'll look into (and A/B test, as you mentioned, but I need traffic first...).

I hadn't even thought of talking to insurance companies -- I'll start looking at that, too, with a buddy I've got in that business.

Thanks again!