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Review my startup: http://nimbu.net/ - smart website monitoring

10 points by moomerman ↗ HN
I've finally taken the plunge and got my first startup out of the starting blocks. It's been live for a week now and I've been adding new features almost daily. I'd really appreciate any feedback. http://nimbu.net/

31 comments

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odvious
Your Pricing and Signup link is deceiving. You should separate the pricing since that what I expect to see when I click on that link.

Other than that, I think the idea is straight forward and decently presented. I would like you to highlight on that front page what makes you different (read: exceptional) than other providers.

moomerman
Thanks, I take your point about the pricing, will separate them for now.

My aim is to provide more data analysis than other monitoring sites and give you feedback on the performance of your web application.

odvious
Having a features page which explains that in a little more detail might be beneficial. Same with have a feature 'grid' that compares your service to others.

I have signed up and am testing it out, so far it looks very easy to use. I do like the visualization with Google Maps to get various response times. Very impressive.

catone
I would second this. Some of the features look really intriguing -- like the uptime graphs and the global visualization -- but I want more info -- like how often my site is pinged and from how many different locations.
ooorrr
+1 - I'm always looking for a better simple solution for multiple domains, but I won't sign up until I know what I'm getting.
moomerman
Will definitely add a features list then, I was thinking I was already overloading the user a bit on the homepage but having a separate link to a detailed features section means those that want more information can get it.
moomerman
I've changed the link to just Signup for now as the pricing isn't an issue
elbac
why is this better then http://pingdom.com ?
moomerman
This is a competitive product I guess. I have used pingdom for years and most of the development of this product has been to satisfy me as a developer and what I want out of a monitoring product. I always found the interface of pingdom to be cluttered and clunky and the information I really wanted was always lots of clicks away. I admit though that the good things about pingdom I have tried to incorporate into this product.

The unique aspect of this product is the individual analysis of data and suggestions/alerts before your site goes down. It will warn you if things suddenly change on your site, something that I don't think any other sites do.

dazzawazza
"Use of Customer’s Name and Company Name

Nimbu reserves the right to use your name and/or company name as a reference for marketing or promotional purposes on the Nimbu.com website and other communication with existing or potential Nimbu customers. To decline Nimbu this right you need to email help@nimbu.net stating that you do not wish to be used as a reference."

This is completely unreasonable. You want me to email you to decline the right! You should have to _ask_ ME for the right!

moomerman
You're absolutely correct. I 'borrowed' the t&c's from somewhere else and I would never enforce this. In fact the testimonials I have on the homepage I have written to the individuals in question to ask for their permission. Am removing!
bbuffone
Something simple - Add margin to the left side. It is very hard to read with the text up against the edge of the browser.

It would be good to understand the location of the server(s) doing the monitoring.

moomerman
Thanks, will do. The servers are currently in Florida, California and London. I will be adding more soon hopefully. I will create a Help/Info section detailing where the servers are and more details about how often they poll/what their user agent is etc.. You can see all the servers on a map in the website detail page if you have a website setup.
marcamillion
It seems to me that the only thing you monitor is the domain name, like pingdom. If this is the case, maybe you should make it clearer.

If not, you should make that clearer too. When I think of site monitor, what I want is to be able to monitor my hdd, cpu usage, ram spikes, main domains, etc. E.g. similar to serverdensity.com's offering.

Add some more info about exactly what you offer, and the cost. I know it says free on the sign-up page, but you should make it clear on the main page that this is a beta period.

Good job on actually launching though. Many people don't even make it that far!

moomerman
Cool - I will make it clearer. I actually have the server-side monitoring in development, but I'm trying to focus on this one product for now.
udfalkso
I need a way to remove a site from my list.
moomerman
You can remove a site by clicking the detail link (the link from the dashboard) and then there is a delete link in the top right hand corner. I will work on making this more obvious.
Kollner
I am a Pingdom customer and I think the thing that could make me shift is an enhanced form of custom check - like what Pingdom has today but better.

In my setup I made a public service where external tools can retrieve some realtime stats like current number of users, queue lengths, number of jobs processing etc. Pingdom uses this service in different custom checks and it kinda works, but I can't use the stats or graphs for anything. Not all checks should be described in a status code and response time - a simple number would be great. Make graphs with that and allow users to set a threshold for when alerts should be sent.

Another thing missing is support for basic authentication.

As others have noted your front page is not really getting the message through.

moomerman
That is a very interesting use case. I was thinking about allowing users to create scriptable tests and then provide reporting around that, I think it could meet your requirements. I will add the basic authentication stuff.
Kollner
Scripting. I am not quite sure what you mean by that, but please make it simple. Pingdoms custom checks are simple because site owners just need to make an endpoint that prints out an xml snippet.

Fx. I have a service here: http://api.convert.io/realtime.svc/pingdom/queue-length which prints out: <pingdom_http_custom_check><status>OK</status><response_time>2</response_time></pingdom_http_custom_check>

How about you offer the same, but add a few more check types. One with the status/response time and another with just a single number.

<nimbu_http_custom_check><check_value>2</check_value></nimbu_http_custom_check>

derobert
"Sign up" is two words.

After three sites, I was told I needed to upgrade. Clicking said link did nothing. But can still add sites by going to http://nimbu.net/addresses/new; an error is presented, but the site is added anyway.

Calling redirects failed is problematic; for example, try monitoring http://www.google.com/ The non-US pingers will always fail due to country redirects. And http://www.google.com/ncr won't work either, because it always redirects.

moomerman
Thanks for the comments, I will fix the bugs asap. On the redirect issue, do you think that receiving a redirect on a url you are monitoring should result in success? I hadn't thought about that before, maybe it should be an advanced option, eg. do you expect a 200 OK or (dropdown list of other responses).
derobert
The advanced option idea sounds good. By default, I'd suggest follow the redirect, and add the time of both requests together (e.g., do what a browser would). Other options would be to not follow the redirect, or to accept only a certain status code (e.g., 200)
guiseppecalzone
I'm a big fan of demos. If I don't see a demo, I usually won't go through an install just to see how it looks.
moomerman
Thanks for the comment. There is no installation required so I'm not sure what you mean. You can try the site functionality for free so that would work as a demo. If you mean you don't want to sign up, then would a screencast work in that situation?
DenisM
Why aren't you charging money? Excuse me for being blunt, but this is seriously silly - your purpose is to find if anyone will pay, right?

Also, one feature I myself would pay money for is sha256 validation of the content of specified files (html, js etc). Since I'm using AJAX I don't really have a problem with dynamic content. I want to be notified when/if my site is defaced. I will pay $5/month and consider it a real bargain, if you have multiple monitoring locations to make it hard for defacers to serve selective content.

moomerman
Thanks for your comments. I am working on the payment system now, I decided to launch the product early and gather some feedback while I'm doing that though. At the moment you can only monitor up to three sites.

The content validation idea is very good thanks.